


alone with you

by myticanlegends



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: (and laura), (at first), Alternate Universe, Amira and Matteo are Best Buds, Canon Trans Character, Closeted Matteo, Coming Out, Communication, Depression, Falling In Love, Famous Musician David, Flirting that may or may not be flirting, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mental Illness, No Outing Here folks, Pining, Slow Burn, Two Messy Boys trying to Sort Shit Out, a blatant amount of Hozier songs, lots of pining, written before s4 so og!balloon squad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-01-25 18:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18579733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myticanlegends/pseuds/myticanlegends
Summary: After seeing David play the guitar at a concert he attended with Sara, Matteo thinks he's seen the most beautiful man in the world. But he doesn't expect much to come out of the realization, right up until he walks into Amira’s kitchen a month later to get them a biology study snack and sees David leaning against the counter as he scrolls through something on his phone.Matteo freezes. David glances up briefly and seems to blink in surprise as well. They’re both sort of staring, and Matteo doesn’t know why David is staring but what he really wants to know is what a famous person is doing in his classmate’s kitchen and also what it’s like to kiss him, but the second question is less relevant considering the major importance of the first one.“Na,” David finally greets.“Na,” Matteo stumbles out in response, and then backs out of the room and flees.lt all sort of goes downhill from there.





	1. movement

In a crowded venue, with the air full of music that can almost be described as transcendent, Matteo sees the most beautiful man in the world. He could be an angel, Matteo thinks, as the stage lights glow like a blinding halo around the man’s head. The smile he has as he plays, fingers plucking gracefully across bass guitar strings, cannot possibly be human. Matteo also might genuinely be floating. He feels like he’s floating. Surely, he must have died in order to be here.

No one seems to notice that Matteo is being sent into an existential crisis of whether or not there is a god, and how there must have been one at some point in order to have created this guy. He’s dressed in all black like he’d blend into the background, but Matteo doesn’t understand how he could possibly get away with that when he looks so damn pretty. Based on the screams of the crowd when he adds soft vocals to the lead performer’s raspy croon, he’s not getting away with blending in at all. His hair is floppy and dark, his eyes visible even from the back of the room, and black hoodies do not hide the way he moves like he’s part of the music. He’s born for the stage and everyone knows it.

There is a woman playing the keyboard and singing lead, and plenty seem to love her too, but Matteo can’t look away from the man. As if sensing his gaze, he looks up and in Matteo’s direction, and their eyes meet across the crowd. Matteo swears that the man winks.

For a moment, it’s just them and the music and that charming smile directed disarmingly at him.

And then he remembers Sara. Or more accurately, she reminds him of her presence with a squeal and a tug on his arm, forcing him to duck his ear closer so that she can whisper-yell in his ear, “I think David just winked at me!”

The first thing that Matteo processes is the name. David. Of course Sara would know it, she’d been looking forward to this concert for months, and if Matteo had known what he was walking into, he would have bought tickets much earlier.

And then he thinks about that smile, seemingly directed at him, and then remembers the crowd around him. So what if he winked? It wasn’t for Matteo. Matteo was just a boy in the audience surrounded by hundreds of people. It’s a performance. Even knowing that, Matteo can’t help but feel the disappointment flowing through him.

The song draws to a close with a final strum of David’s guitar, and Sara is looping her arm around Matteo’s neck to kiss him. She is happy, and high off the energy of the crowd, and Matteo is reminded that her parents are out of town tonight and she wants him to stay over.

He is suddenly so, so tired.

Everything passes in a blur after that. Matteo feels the bass of the guitar vibrating in his soul, the only constant in the rise and fall of music and voices, and Sara is tugging on his hand to get them closer to the front. He obliges, if only because there is nothing else to do. The bodies pressing around him feel suffocating and Matteo wants to run and hide away with just the sound of the music forever, but he is still holding Sara’s hand and she expects him to stay.

When he looks up at the stage, Matteo meets the man’s eyes again, just for a second, and it’s hard to deny that he’s looking at anyone but Matteo. His eyes are dark and smoldering, and being on stage seems to give him an arrogant confidence that Matteo wonders if he still has off stage. And then Matteo reminds himself that there’s no point in wondering what David does off stage at all. He turns away.

Sara pulls him through the crowd, and he focuses his attention on her so that he won’t get lost and so he doesn’t feel as much like people are pressing in on him further and further until he can’t breathe. There is no air here. When he looks back up, David doesn’t meet his gaze again. Something feels missing now, that wasn’t missing before.

When he walks Sara home, she invites him up, and he shakes his head a little dully.

“I have to get home,” he says, and offers no excuse beyond that.

Sara is smart. She knows bullshit when she sees it. Her lips curl downward into something hurt and bitter compared to the smiles she had shared all night. “You always do this.”

Matteo only shrugs, and she huffs and slams the door in his face without saying goodbye or kissing him goodnight. Matteo shouldn’t be relieved as he is.

 

He doesn’t expect to see David again because he’s the guitarist for what Matteo has finally noticed is an extremely popular German singer/songwriter duo and seeing band members outside of a concert is proven to be a rare experience.

Which is why he’s surprised when he walks into Amira’s kitchen a month later to get them a biology study snack and sees David leaning against the counter as he scrolls through something on his phone. Matteo knows for a fact that Amira is not related to anyone even remotely famous. He also knows that he is not high, because Amira doesn’t like it when he comes to study when he is high, and after a brief moment, he remembers that he really is in Amira’s house and didn’t wander into someone else’s kitchen by accident. What he doesn’t know is anything that could explain what is happening.

Matteo freezes. David glances up briefly and seems to blink in surprise as well. They’re both staring, and Matteo doesn’t know why David is staring but he really wants to know what David is doing in his classmate’s kitchen and also what it’s like to kiss him, but the second question is less relevant considering the major importance of the first one.

“Na,” David finally greets.

“Na,” Matteo stumbles out in response, and then backs out of the room and flees.

Amira glances up from her biology textbook as he enters her room without their snacks, raising an eyebrow, but Matteo is still shell-shocked enough that he can’t come up with a way to ask why there’s a famous person in her kitchen. Amira opens her mouth, like she’s about to question something, and then something seems to occur to her.

“Laura or David?” she asks.

“Huh?” Matteo says dumbly.

Amira sighs and pulls herself out of her slouched study position. “I assume you saw Laura or David? They’re friends with my brother, and I forgot they were coming over today.”

Matteo hasn’t stopped staring since he entered the kitchen, and he isn’t about to stop now. “Your brother… is friends with the most popular band in the city right now?”

“Look,” Amira says, with another disgruntled sigh. She sounds like she’s had this conversation one too many times to bother being coy. “I don’t tell people because then they’ll be all over me trying to get something, but you’re my friend, so I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Matteo hadn’t even known Amira considered him a friend. They just studied together, and sometimes Matteo came over to avoid talking about girls or girlfriends or Sara with the rest of the boy squad, and… Okay, yeah, they were friends. But it was nice having confirmation he wasn’t the only one who thought it.

But there was still the issue of David in the kitchen, and probably that other girl from the band somewhere in Amira’s house, and he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“Don’t be weird,” Amira scoffs when he doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not being weird,” Matteo shoots back, and finally moves to sit back down by their books. They still don’t have snacks, but Matteo isn’t going to be the one to brave the kitchen to get them.

“You’re being weird,” Amira disagrees, but she rolls her eyes and turns her eyes back to their notes anyway. Then she comments, “I didn’t know you liked indie music.”

“Sara took me,” Matteo explains.

“Ah,” Amira agrees. “Sara.”

She sounds all too knowing for Matteo to be comfortable. Then again, when he’s with Amira, he never really feels the need to talk about girls or pretend to be super straight. It feels nice to just be himself around someone, so when the thought flashes through his head that he should talk about Sara more, just to make sure she really knows how totally straight he most definitely is, he dismisses it. He likes their dynamic.

So he doesn’t say anything about Sara. Instead, he flips through his notes to catch up to where Amira is at, because she’s always so far ahead of him, and asks, “So. Genetics?”

Amira starts explaining, but he can’t stop thinking about David in the kitchen.

 

The next time Matteo sees Vampire City perform, it’s for an LGBT+ homeless youth benefit and they’re scheduled as the final band. By then, Matteo has seen David around Amira’s house a couple times but never spoken a word to him. He has, however, had a solid one minute conversation with Laura about the weather, and on one memorable occasion, was asked about what he thought of one of the songs they were practicing in the living room. Because apparently famous duo-bands practice in the home of one of their old high school friends.

Amira mentions the benefit off handedly when they are on the bus, emphasizing the LGBT+ part of the benefit just as clearly as she emphasizes that David and Laura are going to be playing, and Matteo doesn’t know what to make of that. Maybe she thinks he is more socially conscious than he actually is, or that he is a huge fan of Vampire City -- neither of which are true. He is just a huge fan of angels who played the bass guitar and smile at him in greeting every time they see each other.

Matteo invites Jonas, who  _ is  _ socially conscious and a big fan of weird transcendental indie music, and Jonas invites Carlos and Abdi who like music in general, and then Carlos invites his girlfriend, Kiki, who invites the entire girl squad, which includes Hanna, which makes Jonas act weirder than usual and it’s all one big, giant mess of a mistake. It comforts Matteo to know that Amira has to put up with it too, because he doesn’t think either of them expected their entire crews.

Vampire City isn’t even playing that many songs. They are scheduled to play a couple at the end of the night but until then, the benefit has the appearance of a normal outdoor party, albeit with an entire building wall covered with statistics on homeless youth and LGBT issues that occasionally people glance over at. There is an electronic sign on the far end of the wall with how much money has been raised, and so far Vampire City and the other bands playing have drawn quite the crowd, and the donations.

Matteo wonders how many people here are just there to see David and Laura.

Jonas and Abdi are joking around with most the girl squad, and Kiki and Carlos have disappeared into the crowd, when Matteo finds himself alone and reading something about how many religious parents kick their kids out for being gay. It makes him think of his mother and her bible quotes, and how Matteo has been avoiding church for years, and what could have happened if he hadn’t moved out and into a shared flat. Hell, it reminds him what could still happen, but at least he can pretend it doesn’t apply to him and know that he wouldn’t actually end up homeless if it did.

Someone comes up to stand next to him and they both look at the little rainbow graph and its implications. Matteo glances over curiously, thinking Jonas had joined him, but instead finds himself faced with the profile of David framed by the setting sun and the fairy lights of the outdoor venue. David’s hair is messier up close, shoving its way out of a beanie, and Matteo can see every detail of his face down to the soft red in his cheeks. Matteo stares, which is unfortunately his gut reaction to David, but he also hadn’t expected to end up standing right next to him in the first place.

“You made it,” David greets, and Matteo hadn’t expected that he had known Matteo was coming either. They are the first words they have spoken to each other since their encounter in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he says, a little stupidly, and then stops himself before he can say something equally stupid like, “So did you.”

David looks over at him from the statistics page, his eyes wandering up and down at Matteo’s baggy sweater and even looser jeans, and comments, “You don’t seem the sort for social awareness causes.”

He is right, but Matteo doesn’t have to admit it. He shrugs, a little vaguely, and hopes that he doesn’t have to explain that he isn’t really a good person at all, he is just here to see David play his guitar and pretend that he is looking at him in the crowd again.

“I like your music,” he explains. It sounds unsure, like a question.

“Not my cause?” David asks, looking amused, and Matteo doesn’t know how other people usually handle all this attention from such a beautiful person, because with just that smile, Matteo honestly feels like he is going to explode.

“Your cause?” he fumbles out, confused.

In an instant, amusement evolves from something innocent to something much more dangerous as David smirks, gesturing towards the wall. It isn’t even a cruel smirk, but it draws Matteo’s attention to his lips in ways it probably shouldn’t. Eye contact, Matteo reminds himself, and luckily David’s eyes are so beautiful that Matteo can’t exactly look away from them either. At least it’s not his lips.

David’s voice is teasing as he answers Matteo’s question, oblivious to where Matteo’s thoughts had been quickly sliding. “Yeah. Laura and I organized this. You didn’t think we just agreed to play to get people to come, did you?”

“Isn’t that why you’re playing anyway?” Matteo asks, trying for a snarky smirk too. “To get people to come?”

“It worked,” David shrugs. He hasn’t looked away the entire time. He has a septum piercing, Matteo notes, and he has to admire David’s commitment to his dark, artsy aesthetic. But then Matteo has to remind himself that he isn’t looking where he is supposed to be again, and also that looking at people’s noses is weird.

“It got you here,” David finishes.

Matteo blinks. He doesn’t know what to do with that. Had David wanted him to come? Or is he grouping Matteo in with the rest of the people just here to see Vampire City? Matteo wants to tell him their music hadn’t actually gotten him here at all, but he has committed to that excuse and it makes him seem less like a stalker with a crush than his actual reasons, so he can’t exactly take it back now. 

Besides, he had gotten what he had come here for and more: a beautiful boy is looking at him again, and he looks like he actually sees Matteo. Like Matteo doesn’t even have to open his mouth to share all the broken pieces of himself with, and David understands. 

It’s something that Matteo finds impossible to shake because he finds it hard to think of anyone in his life that does the same. No one looks at him and considers that he might have secrets, or that he might be hurting, and that he smokes weed so often because he doesn’t want to feel like he actually exists. Matteo lives his life pretending to be someone he is not. Someone happy, someone friendly, someone straight. He doesn’t know if David can actually know any of that, but his eyes seem so honest that Matteo knows that David can sense something. 

His eyes are brown. They’re cute. There’s no part of David that Matteo can look at without feeling overwhelmed. Matteo doesn’t like feeling so seen. So while he is usually more confident, instead he is left trying to make replies out of static gay screaming.

Matteo shrugs again, as casual as he can, and says, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Oh?” David asks, eyes gleaming bright. He shifts closer, their shoulders almost touching as he tilts his head in evaluation. He is still smiling, and it’s so wide that Matteo can see his gums. Matteo wonders if he ever stops smiling. “You’re somewhere else right now?”

“I’m in bed,” Matteo immediately answers. “Watching a movie.”

“What movie?” David asks.

Matteo barely pauses. “Shrek.”

If he hadn’t been sure that David was an angel before, he has all the proof he needs the moment that David laughs. His smile is wide and toothy, and everything about him seems to open up as if it had all been an act before. Maybe it had been, Matteo can’t really claim to know anything about him. Maybe they are both just playing parts. But when David laughs, he does not seem dark and artsy, or like a famous band member who had created a benefit for homeless LGBT+ youth, he is just David. And David shines like the sun.

Once he stops laughing, it is quiet as Matteo tries to recover or at least force out something else to say, but when he can’t, David smiles apologetically. His hands shift awkwardly in his jacket pockets for the briefest second and then he says, “I’ve gotta go play soon, but I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah,” Matteo finally speaks, and David disappears into the crowd or through a backdoor or wherever it is that the venue’s musicians are allowed.

“Dude,” Abdi says before Matteo could process everything, parking right next to him in the spot David had just been. “You know David Schreibner? ”

And if Abdi of all people knows who David was, Matteo has a lot more to catch up on than he thought.

 

When he googles David that night he finds a lot more pictures than he expected, but the same amount that he is starting to understand is a reality. Lots are from what looks like tabloid magazines taken on the street, others are from people who saw him and posted on social media, and some are professionally done and feature Laura too. He finds a whole twitter thread dedicated to David’s various septum rings and is glad someone else decided to be creepy so that he doesn’t have to look it up himself.

David’s social media is empty other than a few thank you’s to interviewers, magazines, and venues. Occasionally there are reminders about performances and the benefit that was that night. There are almost no personal messages but sparsely, Matteo can find pictures uploaded of little doodles done on the corners of sheet music.

There is a tweet dated an hour ago that is a picture of the now empty venue where the benefit was held, directed at the wall of homelessness statistics. Remarkably, it looks taken from the same spot Matteo had seen it. The picture is captioned “all my love to everyone who donated today <3” and Matteo kind of wishes he had donated instead of standing around taking advantage of a free event just for the chance to see David’s fingers on his guitar.

When he goes back to the search engine, his mouse hovers over David’s Wikipedia page, and he wonders if that’s a violation of privacy now that he’s actually talked to the guy. Social media can be something between friends, but Wikipedia pages? Are 100% just for stalkers. But when he clicks the link, he scrolls down to the “personal life” section and finds it almost completely void of history.

It does, however, helpfully provide him with the information that David is both pan and trans, and that tonight was not his first LGBT+ advocacy event. It also links him to the articles where the editor got the information.

Matteo hastily exits his search page instead of clicking on those too. It feels off to have all the knowledge he could possibly want about David at his fingertips when David has none of his. Unless he goes on Matteo’s instagram and sees his #matteomondays, but that’s really just memes. Also a famous musician is not going to be looking up his instagram. Even when Matteo is the friend of his friend’s younger sister.

 

When Sara hears that he went to a concert featuring her favorite band with an entire group of people and hadn’t invited her, she ignores him for a week. It wasn’t as if he can explain that it hadn’t even been a concert, it had been a charity benefit, because what does that matter when Vampire City was playing? So during that time, he is stuck with the boy squad questioning him more than usual about whether or not he and Sara are okay. He had gotten a girlfriend to get them off his back, but evidently girls are a topic that never goes away.

 

He gets an instagram notification from one @da_vid.gif and he instantly knows who it is. It takes him almost three days to get up the nerve to accept the follow request and then send one back. It takes almost four days for his request to be accepted. He cares more about that notification than the text he finally receives from Sara saying she was sorry for being mad so long.


	2. take me to church

Matteo can’t get out of bed. At school, the boys had been talking about sex and telling jokes and generally messing around like usual but Matteo had never felt so out of place. It was like he was just hit with it — the sudden realization that he’d never be the same as them.

He can laugh and make something up about Sara like he usually does, and he can act for all the world like he is like them, but he never will be. They make it seem so easy. They don’t have fathers who left them or mothers who are mentally ill, and they have a bunch of friends that they can relate to when they want to talk about girls.

As much as he pretends, when Matteo pictures happy, he pictures a boy. And he isn’t sure he wants to say it because then everything would come falling down around him. The minute Matteo is gay, he is different, and Matteo just wants to be the Matteo he is now: hanging out with the boys and getting high, playing video games, and sneaking into bathrooms to avoid people at parties. Even if that meant talking about girls.

The problem was, the Matteo he is now is not happy.

The Matteo he is now is smoking his second roll of weed for the night, curled in a ball on his chair, and hasn’t been able to get up to eat lunch. Or dinner. His music shuffles softly in the distance, his headphones hugging his ears, and maybe it says something that Matteo has a playlist just for days like these.

He can hear Laura’s voice fade into focus, singing something gentle about kissing or the end of the world, and curls in on himself further. He closes his eyes, taking another hit of smoke until he can’t hold it in much longer before letting it out. A harmony comes in and Matteo can almost reach for that voice, picture him close, and let himself imagine for just a brief second that he is singing to him.

And then he switches the song. David is more out of his reach than anyone.

 

Say what you will about girls and Matteo’s attraction to them, but girls were nice. Even after a couple days without much communication to anyone, the boys acted the same as usual. Or maybe that said as much about Matteo as his playlist did, but at the same time, Sara says something and she doesn’t even know him as well.

When they meet up outside of school on Monday, she takes one look at him and places a soft kiss on his lips and grasps for his hand. Matteo thinks this is supposed to be comforting, or at the very least, friendly. This is what Sara does these days: whenever either of them are sad, she kisses like it’ll help them. Like a band-aid, except for one that ironically reminds Matteo of part of the problem.

They buy ice cream and sit in the park, and Matteo likes Sara, he genuinely does, but it makes him feel just as alone as he sometimes does with his friends. 

“You didn’t text over the weekend,” Sara says, and Matteo can only nod. He works on eating his ice cream so that he doesn’t have to answer.

“Was it your mother?” She asks.

Matteo nods again like that’s actually the answer. Maybe it’s part of it. She had texted again this weekend with another bible quote and a little sheep emoji. 

Sara takes his free hand with her free hand and looks him in the eye with a seriousness that Matteo can’t quite believe when he’s often acting a little like an asshole to her. He is an asshole, actually, beyond what even she knows, because he’s using her to hide a secret. 

“You can talk to me,” Sara says. 

Matteo watches her for a moment, and she looks genuinely back at him with a smile, but Matteo is not looking forward to the reaction he might get if he says,  _ I’m gay and not into you like you’re into me. _

“I will,” He lies. Lying comes so easily.

She grins, like a happy little bunny, and hops her way back into looking out over the park. Matteo follows her gaze. And then they’re just sitting there, eating ice cream, and he can sense Sara glancing over at him.

“My dad lost his job,” she finally says as if proving that talking to each other is something that they can actually do, and also that she trusts him.

Matteo is immediately concerned, turning towards her and lowering his ice cream, but for once she is the one looking away like she doesn’t really want to see his reaction. Matteo doesn’t know why. Thousands of people lose their jobs and they turn out alright. Sara keeps her eyes facing forward and it feels bigger than just a loss of a job.

“What are you going to do?” Matteo asks.

“I don’t know…” Sara admits quietly. “My parents keep arguing, and I think we might have to move out, and I can’t even tell Leonie because I don’t think she’s ever had to consider being poor…”

Matteo finds himself wrapped in a hug and he lets her fall into it because he may be a shitty, secretly gay boyfriend, but he isn’t going to abandon her like this. He squeezes her close, and she’s offering him a sad smile, and honestly if this were real it would be so much easier to fit in and be someone who is loved.

She swoops in for another kiss, because this is something girlfriends and boyfriends do, but Matteo makes a face and moves his hand to shove her ice cream in front of her incoming lips. “Gotcha,” he grins, like he is teasing her, and at least it gets Sara to smile. She sputters and laughs with an indignant, “Matteo!”, and she plants a kiss on him anyway. 

She tastes like ice cream.

Jonas, Abdi, and Carlos catch up with them a couple minutes later so that they can go back to Jonas’ to play video games, and by then the ice cream cones are melted between their fingers and on each other’s faces. Like a game, Sara keeps trying to kiss him, and Matteo keeps blocking her advances.

Jonas laughs when he sees them, throwing an arm around Matteo’s shoulders, and says, “We leave you alone for five minutes, and this is what we return to!”

“I think it’s cute,” Carlos decides.

Sara grins at Carlos like she thinks it’s cute too. Matteo is still laughing, and it’s been fun, but he doesn’t like the insinuation of cute when applied to Matteo and Sara. They believe it’s real. Everyone believes it’s real. Matteo doesn’t know whether he wants them to catch on or never know at all.

“Where’s my girlfriend?” Abdi complains dramatically.

Jonas only laughs and starts wrangling all three of them towards the park exit. “Come along, my young ones. Sorry for stealing your man, Sara, but it’s very important I kick his ass in Mario Kart right now.”

“Hey!” Matteo exclaims, but he can’t be very indignant when he really does suck at Mario Kart.

Sara only rolls her eyes and plants a kiss to Matteo’s cheek. “Text me later, yah?”

Matteo nods, and Abdi is making kissy faces behind her back, and he wants to tell him to shove off but doesn’t. 

“Say goodbye to Sara!” Jonas calls out as they walk.

“Bye Sara,” Matteo says dutifully, and Sara laughs. All of them don’t know a thing.

 

Amira starts inviting him to study over at her place more often, both because Matteo suspects she doesn’t like the completely lack of control in his teenage-run flatshare but also because her brother and his friends are over more often too. Once, Matteo sees her check her lipstick in a mirror by the doorway when they hear Elias’ friends in the living room. He grins at her, and she glares.

Matteo is not complaining, because Amira’s house usually means that he sees David.

It’s stupid. Pining after a literal celebrity is stupid even if they are easily accessible via his study buddy, and even if they follow each other on instagram. Matteo had basically had a heart attack trying to figure out what meme to post on this weeks #matteomonday. Memes were lame, and definitely not cool, and if anything was going to scare a super cool popular person away, it was a meme of a cat falling off of a building. 

David probably didn’t even see it because the next time Matteo is in Amira’s kitchen where they decided to study today, completely unrelated to the cute boys nearby, he comes in and says hello. Amira, getting her stuff from her room, is not there to stop Matteo from being a fool. She is also not there to judge him for being weird, so there is a pro and a con to this situation.

“Na,” David greets, and Matteo can tell it’s purposeful because he sits directly across from him.

“Na,” Matteo parrots back at him.

David grins like they just told an inside joke. He points at Matteo’s textbook. “Biology?”

“We have abi exams this year.”

“Ah,” Davids says. “And you… like biology?”

Matteo narrows his eyes at him, trying to figure out what he wants. David’s friends are literally in another room talking without him but David is fine being here and asking Matteo about school? Matteo wonders if David even graduated high school. He looks the same age. And  _ Matteo _ doesn’t even know if he likes biology and David is asking him about that, of all things?

“Amira likes biology,” he finally answers.

“Ja, but do you?”

Matteo pauses, then answers honestly, “I don’t know.”

Matteo has not had time to form major opinions on things when he has had to spend most of his time managing his depression. He’s floated through a lot of his life not caring. He picked biology because he had needed a science credit and it had been the only class with seats open when he had finally gotten around to signing up. And for some reason, while Sara would have questioned this answer, David only nods like it makes perfect sense.

Amira rushes frantically into the kitchen without her books, looks between Matteo and David at the table, but then turns away the second she decides she has no time to know what they are talking about. She holds up her phone as some kind of proof even as she gathers a bag of things. 

“Girl squad emergency,” she explains. “I’m sorry, Matteo, but I’ve got to go. We can study tomorrow, ja?”

“Yeah,” Matteo agrees. He looks towards the biology stuff he had actually managed to bring today and wonders what he is supposed to do now. Head home and smoke weed? Hit up the boys and see if they’re doing anything?

Just as quickly as she appears, Amira is gone, and Matteo is awkwardly left alone in her kitchen. David is watching him. Matteo looks at him back.

“Want to go somewhere?” David asks.

_ Bad idea _ , whatever logical brain cell he has left reminds him.

_ YES _ , the rest of him screams.

Matteo acts casual, and shrugs, shoving his stuff haphazardly into his bag. “Sure.”

So David give a short “heading out” to the boys in the other room and Matteo still too surprised to really question it. They head out to the street and Matteo is also surprised at the ease that David walks outside. Based on the sheer number of pictures he’d been able to find of David online, he’d think there would be some kind of superstar disguise involved in getting places. But David only shoves on his beanie and drops his hood up over it, and that’s it.

He walks purposefully but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to head anywhere or hide. Amira’s neighborhood is pretty empty anyway. It’s not in the middle of the city where David might have had an actual concern.

David looks back at Matteo, and like he’s nervously checking to make sure Matteo is actually following, as if anyone wouldn’t, and then kicks his way along the curb as they walk. At some point, Matteo ends up walking beside him instead of behind with no clue where they are going. He’s too busy sneaking glances at David and memorizing the way his hair curls underneath his hoodie. Matteo is hit with a sudden want to touch. He shoves his hands in his own jacket.

After a while of the space between them feeling both like miles and inches, David’s shoulder jostles against his, turning them towards the stairs to a small building nearby. Matteo watches as he unlocks the door. No one has seen them, and if they have, no one seemed to care who Matteo was with. The silence between them is thick and if Matteo says something, he’s unsure whether his words would be able to squeeze themselves in. There isn’t really anything to say anyway. He doesn’t know David that much, and he doesn’t even know what this new place is.

“Our studio,” David answers without Matteo having to ask, and then they’re pushing their way in through the door and David is flicking on the light.

The room is largely empty, with a couple musical instruments laying around and a sound booth in the corner. There is a couch in another corner, and a table full of empty pizza boxes and notebooks. The mess looks like people had been able to spend many nights here without ever having to leave.

Matteo wanders, his fingers going to touch the soundproof panels on the wall to see what they feel like, and David watches. He stands somewhere in the middle of the room, just waiting, and Matteo lets himself make his rounds with curiosity until he pauses in front of a small acoustic guitar that he hadn’t seen in either of Vampire City’s sets.

David notices and picks it up, hooking the strap over his shoulder, and sits down on a stool with the guitar resting on his knee in a way that reminds Matteo of Jonas, which is probably why he’s so comfortable asking, “Are you going to serenade me?”

David looks up from the guitar, licks his lips, and pauses only a beat before asking, “Would you like me to?”

It feels like a challenge. Matteo waits for a sign that David might be joking, David waits for a sign that Matteo might want him to play, but at this point, Matteo can’t exactly turn him down without regretting it for the rest of his life.

He sits down on the stool across from him, probably where Laura usually sits to sing, and nods.

And so David sings.

David has never been the lead singer in any of the songs Matteo has ever heard him play, at the concert or at the benefit. It’s always Laura and Matteo thinks she’s really good. She’s got the voice for their sound and a general vibe of deadpan humor that plays well with their crowd. But if this is how David sounds on his own, he is extremely underutilized.

He strums the guitar, closing his eyes to count the beats, and sings in a quiet way that Matteo doesn’t think could ever be effective on stage anyway. David is personal. He uses his voice as a bridge, but every word sounds lonely.

_ My lovers got humor _

_ She’s a giggle at a funeral _

_ Knows everybody's disapproval _

_ I should've worshiped her sooner _

Everything but the song fades away, and it is just David, Matteo, and a guitar. And when it’s over, Matteo finally notices that not only has he been watching David but David has been watching him back. The last cord hovers above them like a bubble.

“I don’t know that one,” Matteo admits into the quiet.

David smirks again and it takes all of Matteo’s energy not to let his eyes linger on the curve of his mouth. If he does, he’s not entirely sure it’d end up being a bad thing.

“You know all our songs?” David teases. The air is still soft.

“Well, no-” Matteo stammers, and pressure wins out as his gaze drops, if only for a second. David bites his lip when he notices, causing Matteo’s gaze to fly back up to his. His cheeks feel hot.

“You don’t?” David asks curiously.

Matteo can only shake his head. He feels stuck in a tractor beam of cute brown eyes.

“It’s a new one,” David admits.

“She?” Matteo asks. He’s referring to the lyrics, and David seems to understand that, because suddenly he’s smiling, whether in surprise or understanding, and Matteo can’t handle all this proximity without doing anything.

“Or he.”

Fuck. The air is tense around them. It feels like there are only two ways to go from here: either they fall together and Matteo could let everything he’s kept inside so long change, or Matteo could look away and wake up tomorrow morning with everything the same. Same friends, same classes, same life, and a girlfriend.

Matteo looks away. David clears his throat. They’re both leaning away from each other now. Matteo had been unaware of how close they had gotten to begin with. They’re pretending everything is normal, but Matteo can catch a thin layer of pink behind David’s cheeks. He is completely positive that he is worse.

“I should go,” Matteo says, his voice hoarse.

David smiles, like everything is fine, fi _ ne, fine _ , and nods. “Bye, Matteo.”

When Matteo leaves the building, he is in an unknown part of Berlin and so completely lost.

 

Finding his way home doesn’t make him any less lost. He wonders if he made the wrong choice, after all.

 

That night he dreams of what could have happened if he hadn’t turned away. How easily he could have leaned forward and closed the distance behind them and kissed David until their lips turned red and raw. He wondered what David would look like with messier hair, after that beanie had been tossed aside and Matteo had gotten to run his hands through it over and over. Would his hair be soft? Matteo dreams that his hands would be, pressed against Matteo’s sides or holding loosely against his neck. 

When Matteo wakes up, he is breathing lightly, and he feels worse than before. He rolls a joint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post because I had been hoping for a clip from Matteo all day and there is radio silence. Please let him and David be okay tomorrow.
> 
> Other than that, the song quoted is, naturally, Hozier. In this chapter, I mostly wanted to explore Matteo's relationship with both David and Sara, so I hope I did okay in that and that it's not OOC. In Druck, Matteo seems to dive right into a relationship with David, but clearly I am not doing so here.


	3. sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to post a chapter earlier but it was angsty-ish and I saw the latest clip and I thought... you know who doesn't deserve being sad rn? Everyone. So I wrote this chapter and filled it with all the David I could.
> 
> I've added tags and changed the description of this story because it feels like it has a different vibe than what I was originally going for. And just a disclaimer in case anyone is worried, there will be no outing at all featured within this fic. Just two messy boys falling in love. And Sara, who is also a mess for everyone involved.
> 
> Thank you for all your comments and for reading, and I hope this week gets better. Enjoy the chapter.

What Matteo doesn’t count on as part of this whole Vampire City thing, besides being half in love with a boy so impossibly out of his league, is that Sara is in love with David too. For gods sake, she has a poster of him (and Laura) on her wall and Matteo doesn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it before. He certainly notices now as Sara has latched onto kissing his neck. 

It feels like Laura and David are staring into his soul, like they know he is fooling everyone in his life with this entire pretending to be straight act that he has tricked Sara into.

The other thing that Matteo hadn’t counted on was how far rumor mills spread.

It started with Jonas as they were hanging out and he asked Matteo what he had done the day Matteo knew he had been with David.

“Studying with Amira,” Matteo had lied smoothly.

Jonas had given him an odd look and shook his head, “Nah man. Hanna said they had to head out and help Mia with something. What’d you do after? You weren’t answering your messages.”

And for a brief second, Matteo hadn’t known why he was keeping it secret. Nothing had happened. Nothing would happen, it was just two guys hanging out. If anything, he felt he should have been bragging for being able to hang out with someone so popular.

“Nothing much,” Matteo had finally answered casually with a shrug. “Just hangin’ out with that band you like. What was it? Zombie Town? Vampire City?”

“Bro,” Jonas had replied. The video game they were playing was suddenly put on pause, and all of his attention was on Matteo within seconds. And then Jonas repeated, with more emphasis, “ _ bro. _ ”

He launched into a rant about how Laura and David had showed up for a climate change march once, and how he loved that they were using their platform to spread awareness, and probably a few more things along those lines. Matteo didn’t know. He hadn’t been paying much attention. His mind had switched to replaying eyelashes only a couple feet away and wanting to reach out and draw them closer. 

Before he knew it, Jonas was texting their group chat with “guys, Luigi knows VAMPIRE CITY and he didn’t tell us”.

Matteo’s phone blew up with a bunch of “nooooooo”s and “Luigiiiiiiii” and a remarkably insightful “bro is that why you were talking to David Schriebner at that benefit the other day” from Abdi which caused a chorus of “you were whAT”s.

Carlos told Kiki, who told the girl squad, who in turn told Leonie, who told Sara, and now when she notices him looking at her poster, she takes her chance and goes for gold.

“I hear you met them,” she says, pulling back from where she’s sitting on his lap to sit across from him. She’s pouting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Matteo doesn’t know how Amira avoids all this, and wonders if he should ask. But asking later doesn’t prevent the situation he’s already stuck in.

His answer to Sara’s question is because being with David feels too private, but he knows she won’t see that as an excuse. Worse, she’ll ask why it’s private, and that could leave Matteo to follow some dangerous thoughts. 

So he comes up with a different answer. “I don’t know if I’ll see them again.”

“You have to get me to meet them,” Sara decides, clearly not listening anyway.

Matteo opens his mouth to repeat himself but she’s giving him sad little eyes, and right at that moment they can hear her parents arguing downstairs, and it reminds Matteo too much like how things used to be at his place to actually say no. She winces when she hears.

“Okay,” Matteo says, before she can backtrack or apologize for things that aren’t her fault, or worse, use it as an excuse for one of her band aid kisses.

Sara immediately grins, whatever happening downstairs forgotten. “Really?”

Matteo only shrugs, but that doesn’t matter because she’s throwing her arms around him anyway. 

“You’re the best boyfriend ever!”

Matteo really wishes she wouldn’t say that.

 

When he next sees David, it’s not because he’s at Amira’s or at a concert, it’s because there are giggling girls hiding behind phones at Matteo’s local cafe. He nearly groans, uninterested in whatever they are looking at, and just wants something to eat. But when he gets in line, there’s someone in a hoodie and sunglasses in front of him.

Even with the sunglasses, it proves to be a terrible disguise, and a cliché one at that. It’s exactly what Matteo would have expected last week but something that catches him completely off guard today.

“Those girls are watching you,” he greets.

David turns around and his expression behind his sunglasses makes a long journey between surprised and a couple other emotions, before settling on a smile. His eyes are hidden. It’s smart considering they are one of his most noticeable features, but also Matteo automatically misses seeing them.

“Ah,” David says, looking over at the group of girls watching them. “Yah, that happens. They’re harmless, just excited.”

“Your disguise must not work too well,” Matteo comments, and he wants to reach out and poke it for emphasis but is strangely aware of people watching them. Matteo is not used to being watched. Even now, it’s not him they’re watching.

“No,” David agrees. “It doesn’t.”

They both look at each other for a moment and Matteo can’t help but think of the last time they were alone. He thinks David might be thinking of that too. But the line moves forward, reminding them both that they are not actually alone after all.

David places an order, and like the smug little bastard boy he is, Matteo swoops in and adds his own before paying for both of them. He doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe it’s so that David gives him a little more attention for just a little while longer.

The cashier looks surprised at his boldness, but not as much as David, who is staring from behind his sunglasses. His lips are parted, just a little. Matteo suddenly feels a bit anxious, like he should take it back.

But then David ducks his head, hiding a smile, and Matteo can’t bring himself to be embarrassed at all.

When they leave the cafe, he can see David glance in the opposite direction that Matteo is going. Those girls are still watching through the window. Matteo panics again, not wanting David to leave, and makes something up as he goes along.

“They might try to follow you home,” he says, nodding subtly toward the window. “You can chill at my place for a while, if you’d like. It’s only a couple blocks.”

Matteo can’t tell exactly what David’s eyes are doing but can feel them strongly on him anyway. He refuses to back down.

“Yeah,” David agrees after a short pause. “Good idea.”

Matteo doesn’t really have a lot of time to process that he just invited  _ David Schreibner _ to his flat and it actually worked. David is looking at him expectantly because he obviously doesn’t know where to go, and Matteo is sure that he probably wants to get out of there, so Matteo has already started walking before his brain can catch up.

“You know, now they might try to follow you,” David comments as they walk, and Matteo can tell just from the tone in his voice that he’s joking. “Or google you, now that they know that I know you.”

Matteo can’t help but snort at the thought of anyone putting in that much effort to find out who he is, much less a couple teenage girls at a cafe. “What’s the most they could find? Memes?”

David hums, mock seriously, and says, “They’re very good memes.”

Matteo refuses to follow that line of thought suggesting that David has actually looked through his instagram or googled him at all. It’s hard not to. As much as Matteo wants everything to stay the same, being with David feels far from reality. There’s no way someone as beautiful and famous as David would want to hang out with Matteo and yet… here they are.

When he opens the door to his flatshare, no one else is home and he breathes out a sigh of relief that he doesn’t have to explain why David is here. Mia doesn’t seem like the sort to listen to Vampire City, and he has no idea what Linn does with her life, but Hans would know them simply because he knows anything with an LGBT+ rep. And Hans can be a bit much.

He slips off his shoes by the doorway and turns to find David shedding his disguise. Without his hoodie and sunglasses trying to hide who he is, he almost seems like just a regular boy. His hair is a mess, and for once beanie free, and his shirt is worn and a bit big. He’s nothing like Matteo would have expected and more unexpectedly, he’s in his home.

If David catches him staring, he doesn’t really say anything about it, and instead waits patiently for Matteo to do something like invite him further inside. Matteo clears his throat and looks away, making his way further into the flatshare to desperately look for something to do. He doesn’t really do much that he thinks David might be interested in. Normally Matteo would just sit down to play video games or smoke weed in his room.

Inviting David over had been a very bad idea.

David follows him into the living room like everything is fine and he crashes people’s flats all the time. His hands are in his pockets as he looks around, and Matteo both dreads and desperately wants to know what he’s thinking.

Eventually, when Matteo doesn’t say much at all, David asks, “What level are you on?”

It takes Matteo much too long to realize he’s referring to the Legend of Zelda card sticking out of his game console. “Eight,” he finally says before the obvious next question slips out, “You play?”

David smirks, and now he’s the smug bastard boy. “I finished.”

“You beat the game?” Matteo asks dumbly, as if David hadn’t basically just said that.

David shrugs, completely casual in a way that beats all of Matteo’s previous attempts to be casual too, and answers simply as if he hasn’t just proved that he’s basically the most perfect boy in the world. “Ja. I can help you pass the last level if you want.”

Matteo reminds himself to be cool.

He blinks away whatever stupor David seemed to have put him under and hands the other boy a controller as confidently as he can given the circumstances. “You owe me anyway, for saving you from a bunch of teenage super fans.”

“And for paying for lunch,” David comments.

Matteo hadn’t meant for that to be a big deal. Or at least worth mentioning again.

Luckily, David is continuing anyway, “You seem to distinguish yourself from being a super fan.”

Matteo snorts. “You wish I was. Nah, I only became friends with you so that you could help me beat this game.”

David laughs, pure and bright, like he delights in Matteo being a complete asshole for the sake of a joke, and rolls his eyes. “Ah, yes. That’s why. It’s nothing to do with my charming good looks and amazing talent.”

They both freeze because David seems to realize that it sounded much too flirty to be something a couple of bros might say when they are about to play video games, and because Matteo doesn’t know what to do when confronted with the truth in the form of a joke. The strange thing is, it sounds like a joke that Jonas might have said before, but it hadn’t thrown either of them off guard then. Even when Matteo had a massive crush on him for the longest time.

He knows what he would have said when confronted with Jonas saying it. He would have teased, “With that ugly face? I don’t think so.”

He doesn’t say anything like that now.

Very subtly, in a smooth way that Matteo almost finds impressive, David changes the subject before Matteo would even have to say anything at all. “What quest did you just finish?” he asks, turning towards the tv.

 

They eat the pastries Matteo bought after a couple hours of playing video games on the couch and wrestling each other to get ahead in the game. Matteo had tried shoving his hand in David’s face multiple times to prevent him from seeing, and they hadn’t actually managed to pass the final quest. 

Matteo doesn’t really have time to regret all the unnecessary touching that had been involved, mostly because he doesn’t really regret it at all. And David didn’t seem to mind either. Matteo has heard him laugh more times than he can count and if he were to close his eyes, he’s pretty sure that his blinding smile would be plastered on the inside of his eyelids.

No wonder those girls were giggling in the cafe. And no wonder it seems like the entire world loves him. It’s hard to look away from David.

“Want me to put on some music?” Matteo asks, because he doesn’t want David to go. David doesn’t look like he’s leaving any time soon anyway.

“Okay,” David agrees.

Matteo searches through his playlists and finds he doesn’t actually have that many. His most recently searched playlist is at the top, his depression playlist, and he finally has an excuse to skip past it. He ends up playing a playlist Jonas had sent to him once because Jonas is a pretty musically inclined person, and he knows that David has the same fondness for the guitar.

The first song that plays is a Vampire City song, because of course, which leaves Matteo standing there like an absolute dweeb who tries to impress people with their own work. It also probably makes him appear a bit obsessed with their music which is not what he’s trying to come off as either.

David quirks an eyebrow, looking like he’s holding back a laugh and asks, “Not a super fan?”

Matteo skips the song. The next one is something about falling in love but it’s better than Vampire City so he leaves it on and curses Jonas’ soft selection in music. He’s so embarrassed he can’t even look David in the eye.

“Nah,” Matteo finally admits, running his hand through the mess of his bangs awkwardly. “I only found your music a month ago.”

David looks like he’s thinking, searching back in time, and then asks, “Our last Berlin concert?”

“Ja.”

“So why were you at the charity benefit too?”

Matteo lies, “Amira.”

David seems to get that he’s lying, at least a little, because there’s a twinkle in his eyes as he teases, “And the playlist?”

Matteo doesn’t have to lie for that one, “It’s Jonas’.”

“Jonas?”

“My best friend,” Matteo explains.

“I thought Amira was your best friend,” David says. “You’re at her house so often.”

Matteo makes a face. “Nah. She’s my best bud -- my biology study buddy. But she has her group, and I have mine.”

David nods like he gets it, and he probably does, and then asks curiously after a moment, “So what do you normally listen to?”

Matteo grins. He dramatically scrolls through his phone, relishing every moment that David is watching him in anticipation as the love song in the background fills the silence. And then he presses play.

One Direction streams through his speakers with a popular guitar rift and then What Makes You Beautiful starts playing on full blast.

David bursts out laughing and Matteo adds it to his numerous count of victories for the afternoon. He’s grinning too, and then they’re both grinning at each other, and Matteo can easily say that if he could, he’d spend the rest of the day with just David. He’d spend the rest of the week. Hell, at this rate, he’d spend the rest of his life doing nothing with him.

 

David helps him pick out a #florenzifriday meme when Matteo realizes he hasn’t done it yet. And by realizes he hasn’t done it yet, he means that they’re both scrolling through their phones pretending not to glance over at each other when David looks up from what must have been instagram and asks, “No Florenzi Friday today?”

Matteo tries not to let himself think about the fact that not only has David seen his memes but he’s been paying enough attention to know that Matteo not only has a #matteomonday, but a #florenzifriday as well.

It’s weird how much David notices things.

And it’s not just with Matteo. Because Matteo notices things as well, and he’s been paying lots of attention to David over the past couple weeks. He’s seen how he’ll grab something for his friends at Amira’s house before they’ll even have to ask, or pull Laura aside to talk to her in a corner, or ask Amira about her biology. He’s a kind person. He’s not an asshole like Matteo who is always lying and who can sometimes end up saying the completely wrong thing. 

It reminds Matteo of another reason he is an asshole. He has spent the whole day with a boy he likes, but he has a girlfriend who thinks that he could one day fall in love with her and who also wants to meet the said boy that Matteo is hanging out with. Even worse, it feels like there might be something between him and the boy, and if either one of them were to do something about it, this time Matteo would probably drop everything to be with him.

David is no longer an angel of a boy standing on a stage with a guitar, he is real, and he likes memes and Zelda and had sung the entirety of What Makes You Beautiful just to prove he could, and he doesn’t care that Matteo almost kissed him in his studio just a couple days ago. And Matteo has learned more than that too, throughout the day. David directs all of Vampire City’s music videos. He doodles when he has nothing to do or traces pictures into the table when he doesn’t have anything to draw on. He is cocky, and slightly flirtatious even if they both ignore it, and kind, and messy, and everything that Matteo wants.

He doesn’t mention that Sara wants to meet him and Laura. He doesn’t mention having a girlfriend at all, which probably makes him an even bigger asshole than before.

Instead they pick a meme featuring a really excited dog, and Matteo posts it to Instagram. The day is only halfway over.

 

David eventually leaves when Matteo gets a text from Mia saying that she’s coming home and that she hopes he’s picked up groceries, which he was supposed to have done before seeing David, and David says he should probably leave. 

When Mia comes home, Matteo is laying in bed staring at the ceiling as if it gave him all of life's answers. He is smiling. He thinks maybe that's why she doesn't get after him about the groceries.

 

Later that evening, he gets an instagram notification saying that da_vid.gif has like his #florenzifriday post. David has also posted a picture of that acoustic guitar from the previous week, with the caption "new music out soon". Matteo wonders if it's the song he had shown him, or if it's something new entirely.


	4. sedated

Amira invites Matteo to a party that her brother is having in celebration of Vampire City’s new music that is currently being workshopped. She doesn't invite him because of anything to do with him, because while she may be act subtle about the gay thing if she knows about that at all, she does not know about the David thing. She cannot know about the David thing.

She’s doing it because of the thing she has for her brother’s friend, the dark haired one with the snapback that luckily isn’t David, and Matteo thinks it’s hilarious she thinks Matteo doesn’t notice. He also thinks that it’s hilarious how she doesn’t notice the boy’s big fat crush on her as well, especially considering that he alone makes up over half of the conversation flowing into the kitchen whenever Matteo and Amira are studying at the same time her brother’s friends are over.

If Matteo were a betting man, and he would be if only there was someone else to bet on this with, he’d say that Amira invited him because she doesn’t want the drama of the girl squad while still having a barrier between she and that boy. Which is foolish of her for thinking that Matteo will definitely not take advantage of that situation or know what she is doing. He may be a bit slow sometimes, and she’s definitely super smart, but he’s also a meddling asshole and he has Hanna and Jonas' breakup to prove it.

Also, he really wants to see David, so of course he’s going.

Sure enough, within the first five minutes, when the Amira’s boy approaches them with a little grin, Amira casually guides Matteo with her into the conversation, giving him no attempt to escape. But it wasn’t as if he had a place to go in this crowd of unknown people.

He can see a few people he knows just from exposure to those who head in and out of Amira’s house, but there aren't many. Elias, her brother, is laughing in a corner with Laura and a hijabi woman that Matteo has seen once or twice and still can’t figure out how she's involved. A couple of other boys from Elias’ friend group that tend to be there more often than not are trying to throw peanuts in each other’s mouths. David is nowhere to be seen.

It’s a casual party, more so than Matteo expected, so he’s sure David is around somewhere.

As if thought alone could summon him, Matteo sees him come around a corner talking with a girl who Matteo vaguely recognizes as the opening act he had seen at that first concert. Like that moment in the crowd when he had first caught sight of David, Matteo knows he hadn’t been exaggerating when he had described him as an angel. His breath catches.

David isn't even dressed super fancy, but his black hoodie stretches a little over his shoulders, and he's wearing skinny jeans that hug his legs, and it’s completely unfair that Matteo knows what David is like alone, without any disguise or show persona, and not only does he turn out to be a super amazing person, but he still gets to look like Adonis?

Seeing him before it had been a sharp jolt to the heart, but now it aches and it doesn’t stop even when Matteo looks away.

Basically, he’s fucked and falling in love with superstar.

“Matteo,” Amira says, snapping her fingers to get his attention, and Matteo resigns himself to a night of pining at a distance. He blinks over at Amira and the boy. Yousef, maybe? Amira seemed to have always avoided mentioning his name.

“I was just talking about how we are planning the abi prank,” she says, clearing trying to get him to join their conversation.

“Aren’t you and the girls planning that?” Matteo asks confused.

Amira huffs. “You are supposed to be helping, but you never showed up for the meeting, remember?”

“You were blackmailing me!” Matteo defends.

“Blackmail?” Yousef asks, sounding both confused and also adorably intrigued by any story Amira would have to tell.

“She had my weed,” Matteo informs him solemnly.

There’s a thin line to tread, between both not embarrassing her and not leaving her alone, and Matteo is determined to cross both of them. He shrugs innocently. She tosses him a sarcastic smile.

“He tried hiding it on me when cops were breaking up a party,” she explains with a roll of her eyes, automatically turning to Yousef to correct the purposeful error that Matteo has made. But either way, the setting has already been established. Amira has officially been placed at the scene of a crime, where she had not only been attending a party but she had been attending a party with weed and music loud enough for neighbors to call the cops.

Matteo wants to laugh.

“Amira, Yousef, hi,” David says from behind Matteo, sliding into their little circle next to him. Their shoulders brush. Then David smiles at Matteo, and adds, “Hello, Matteo.”

“Hi,” Matteo says back. He sounds a little breathless, or surprised, or something, and now Amira is the one almost laughing at him. Matteo throws in a vengeful, “We were just talking about a weed incident involving Amira,” just to spite her.

Amira shoots him an incredulous look that is both dangerous and pleading,  _ Do you want to die tonight? Please stop talking. _

David only laughs, “Does it involve her confiscating it from you?”

He knows Matteo better than he would have thought. Or rather, he knows Amira very well.

“Yes, it does,” Amira says, smiling at Matteo with her victory won. “And we were actually talking about the abi prank this year, even if we didn’t get that far.”

“I’d like to hear about the abi prank plans,” Yousef says pleasantly. He has not looked away from Amira the whole time, like she’s his favorite thing to learn more about.

It is then that Matteo is struck with a sudden burst of mischievous inspiration. “I don’t know much about the abi prank so I’m going to go find a drink.”

And apparently the recognition of trying to get Amira and Yousef to get their heads out of their asses is a universal truth, because David says, “I’ll show you where it is.”

Amira’s eyes widen as her plans for a barrier between her and what appears to be the most oblivious case of mutual pining Matteo has ever seen are dismantled. Yousef just nods like this excuse makes complete sense. Matteo acts like he has no idea what situation he has created with a genuine shrug and a “I’ve been craving a beer all day” which is probably the best performance of his life.

“Talk to you later,” David smiles winningly, and then he’s turning to guide Matteo to the drink table as if it hadn’t been one of the first things he noticed when entering.

The minute they’re out of sight, they exchange glances, and then burst out giggling.

 

“I guess…” David muses as they sit outside on a balcony with a pack of beers. They’ve both finished one each, and oddly enough, Matteo doesn’t feel the itch to get plastered that he usually does when he’s drinking. There is nothing to hide from.

“Your favorite animal is a shark!”

Matteo snorts from where he’s leaning his head against the wall. At this angle, he doesn’t have to move at all to watch everything that David does. He’s been doing a lot of watching in the past ten minutes that they’ve spent out here. He’s watched David run his fingers through his thick hair, and how his nose crinkles when he smiles, and that little head tilt he does when teasing Matteo for something stupid. If Matteo is being honest, he hasn’t had much beer because this itself has him drunk on proximity to an extremely, and exceedingly dangerous, cute boy.

“It’s a giraffe,” he corrects.

David pouts at having guessed wrong but takes a swig from his bottle anyway, and Matteo watches his lips circle the bottle and how his throat moves as he swallows.

“What’s my favorite city?” David asks, and Matteo drags his focus back to his eyes.

“Favorite city?” Matteo asks incredulously.

“Yes.”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Amsterdam.”

“Detroit,” David corrects.

“Detroit?” Matteo asks, because this is honestly the most baffling question he’s ever been asked, with an impossible to guess answer to boot.

“Music capital of the world. My favorite movie takes place there,” David says like it should have been obvious and Matteo huffs, but drinks his fair share of alcohol too.

When he looks back over again, David is watching him.

He can see him swallow even if he isn’t drinking anything and his tongue goes out to lick his lips as if they are dry. Matteo’s suddenly feel a bit dry as well. David is leaning forward.

And then David asks quietly, “Where would you go if the world was ending?”

_ Here _ , Matteo thinks.

He can’t really think of an answer other than that because it’s never really been something he’d considered. But he can see how David would be the type of person to wonder. His songs with Laura are ominous and apocalyptic, even when talking about love, and at some point, Matteo thinks he’d want somewhere to go too, if he had as many pictures of himself as David does on the internet taken by strangers who think they have the right to.

It reminds him that even if the world was ending, David would have thousands of better options to be than with Matteo, and millions more that would drop anything to spend their last hours with him too. Matteo is not special. Even when they are alone, Matteo is just another person in a crowd.

“Asking is not how the game works,” he chides. He doesn't ever answer the question. David pulls away.

 

When they reenter the house, the party is in full swing and large groups have congregated. David slips off into the crowd immediately, and Matteo is surprised he’d spent that long without talking to most his guests in the first place. The party is, after all, for him and Laura.

So instead of following, he wanders back to Amira. Yousef is still there, along with Elias, Laura, and that other woman he had seen with them before. Laura’s arm is slung around her waist, and Matteo thinks he gets how she’s connected to the group a bit now.

They’re talking about adventures at Elias’ old school, before he had known Laura but when he was friends with the woman and the boys from the rest of his group. Abi prank discussions had evolved into stories of general buffoonery. And Laura has her own stories of breaking into abandoned buildings and doing ridiculous stunts on tour with David, and although he hadn’t known them then, Matteo wishes he could have been there.

Amira sees him first, and gestures him into conversation as if she had forgotten the whole Yousef incident entirely. Matteo knows from the look in her eye that she has not, and whatever she and Yousef had talked about was not amazing enough for her to forgive him quite yet.

She waits until Laura and the woman are wrapping up a story of their first date before she strikes, with an innocent, “Oh, Matteo, I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s Sara?”

And just like that, she has broken the cardinal rule of not talking about girls. Maybe it had just been a rule to Matteo but he liked that about her. Amira didn’t bring up things she felt were unimportant, and she didn’t tease with things that weren’t.

But she’s also stubborn and proud, and it’s an eye for an eye because it is exactly what Matteo had done when abandoning her with Yousef when she didn’t want to be alone with him. She doesn’t know the full effect the reminder of Sara can have - no one does because Matteo has always worked to hide this part of him away - but still, Matteo is immediately falling off into the deep end of a pool and the water all around him is muted and tangible. But at this party, he cannot hide in his room and fade away. Here, people are talking and they are loud, and the beautiful celebrity that he has followed has disappeared like everyone else will whenever he comes close to revealing his secrets.

“Sara?” Laura asks. There’s an edge to her voice like Matteo has disappointed her without having done anything.

“His girlfriend,” Amira explains, but then she looks over at Matteo and he can see the moment regret hits her. It’s only then that it occurs to Matteo that not talking about girls might have been something Amira had done very purposefully up until this point.

“Ooh, Matteo’s got a girlfriend?” Elias asks, as if this is just another thing to discuss at a party and tease someone for.

This launches into a discussion about girls, and the woman who’s name Matteo still doesn’t know starts talking about Laura again. Elias bemoans about not having a girlfriend, and all of it reminds Matteo too much of Abdi, or Carlos talking about Kiki. The strange thing is, he hadn’t let himself kiss David that first time because he didn’t want things to change but evidently the same conversation happens everywhere, no matter what, and it’s hell. He hadn’t let himself do anything only a couple minutes ago, surrounded by the cool night air, because being himself didn’t matter anyway when being himself was just someone people wouldn't chose to stick with if given the option to leave.

Laura extracts herself from the conversation only a couple minutes in, kissing her girlfriend’s cheek, and leaves to find probably David. Matteo can’t bring himself to feel.

So what David left in the crowd. Matteo is a nobody. No one should care, especially not some strange mega star boy with soulful brown eyes and a guitar. They have known each other a couple months at most. They had only really spoken a couple times.

He meets eyes with Amira and can tell this conversation is uncomfortable for her too, especially with the boy she likes standing next to her as they both watch Elias and the other woman in the group talk about dating.

“Matteo and I have to go,” Amira decides.

Then she is leading him out of her house and into the streets of Berlin where the air is cooler again and Matteo can almost bring himself to breath. He still can’t. He can’t bring himself to remember the last time he breathed at all. He wants another beer. Or some weed.

There is a park across the street where they sit down and Amira seems to get that Matteo will not, cannot, talk.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, adjusting her glasses like it hurts her to apologize but like it’s important to do so.

Matteo shrugs, letting himself slouch down on the bench like he’ll disappear, something he desperately wants to do and never reemerge, and asks, “What for?”

It’s not like talking about dating is a rare or unconventional. People should want to talk about their girlfriends. Matteo should want to talk about Sara, and he does, except for when he wants to talk about Sara it’s because he wants to say that he doesn’t want to be dating her.

Amira fixes him with a stare that suggests she has realized how important it was not to have said anything at all and Matteo looks away.

“What’s with the guy?” he mutters, just to hurt her a little back because he knows it’s something she’s clearly been avoiding. He should probably stop being a dick.

Amira does not glare like Matteo expected her to, sighs, and then surprises him by admitting, “He’s not Muslim.”

“So?”

“So,” Amira explains patiently. “Muslim women can’t date men who aren’t Muslim.”

Matteo snorts, but can’t really bring himself to say anything else. Not because he doesn’t really know the culture or because he’d probably say something insensitive like how it sounds like a stupid, sexist rule, but just because he’s too tired to really fight anyone.

For the longest time, he and Amira just sit together on the bench, drowning in their individual sorrows, and Matteo doesn’t feel alone.

 

Laura confronts him the next day when Matteo and Amira are actually studying, having put it off long enough. David is not there. Matteo may or may not have casually checked when entering the home as if for some reason he would always be there. It was strange how often Matteo had seemed to have seen him here before.

“So, you have a girlfriend,” she says, leaning against the doorway.

She seems terrifying. Matteo can see how she is the type of person to stand in front of thousands of people and sing about oblivion or falling in love. There’s a bravery to being yourself in front of a crowd, and she owns it. Laura seems like the type of person who would get in a fight and has done so before.

But she also seems a bit tired. Like she’s tired of fighting, but fights because she needs to. She sings because she doesn’t want to be anyone but herself, despite the reality of being heard.

Or maybe Matteo is looking into too much just from the singular way she is holding herself right now like it is one of the times she will get in a fight if she has to but desperately doesn’t want to. Matteo doesn’t know why him having a girlfriend has anything to do with it but it is easily explained if this is how she always is.

“Yeah,” he says, and wishes that didn’t have to be his answer.

And then because he feels like she’s waiting for something, he comments, “So do you.”

Laura narrows her eyes at him, and Matteo realizes he has probably said the wrong thing and also that now she is probably waiting for him to say something bigoted about it.

He doesn’t say anything bigoted about it. He probably could because he definitely has questions, mostly along the lines of how being lesbian and being Muslim even works, but that’s more applicable towards Laura’s girlfriend and it’s also something he won’t dare to ask either of them. He’d google it if he really wanted to bring himself to, or he’d ask Amira. Islam seems more and more complex the more time he spends in her house. But at the very least, Laura and her girlfriend prove that if Matteo did come out, Amira wouldn’t hate him because of her religion.

When it becomes clear he’s not adding anything else, Laura gives him a short, “thanks” even though he had just stated a fact.

Matteo mentally begs Amira to come back. Laura and David have the amazing habit of being able to pin down Matteo when he is alone.

“Look,” Laura sighs, because everyone seems in an exhausted mood toward Matteo lately. “I had trouble figuring myself out. So does everyone. But don’t let figuring out who you are hurt people, or be a dick about whoever people turn out to be.”

“Okay?” Matteo offers, because he’s pretty sure he hadn’t actually been rude enough to warrant that kind of response.

Laura looks at him like he might be a little hopeless, and Matteo quickly searches for assurance because she hasn’t stopped being a little terrifying the whole time she’s been in here. He isn’t sure if it’s the fame and the fact he’s seen her on a poster while kissing his girlfriend or if it’s just who she is.

“I think it’s cool, that you, uh-“

And then he realizes that just by starting on a rant about her being lesbian, he’s making it a big deal, which is definitely not what he’s supposed to be doing to make up for pointing out she's a lesbian. It seems too ‘straight ally making an effort’ but Matteo guesses that’s the vibe he should be aiming for anyway.

He finishes lamely, “have a girlfriend.”

“Great,” Laura drawls.

It is at this point, probably because of all the needless repetition of the word girlfriend and also because the real life half of the duo on that godforsaken poster is staring at him like he’s a lunatic, Matteo finally remembers his promise to Sara.

“Oh! Um. Sara wants to meet you two actually. You and David- Vampire City. You know,” and then he mimes smashing drums to indicate some sort of band because he’s a fool and also because she’s still staring at him incredulously and he feels the need to fill in that extra silence. Vampire City doesn’t even have a drummer.

“Your girlfriend Sara?” Laura asks, as if there’s ever been another Sara mentioned.

Matteo opens his mouth to say something, unsure of what will even come out at this point after being scared into total word vomit, but before anything can even come out, Laura scoffs and exits the room.

Amira enters much too late, luckily with her books meaning she’s not going to bail and leave him with whoever is in the house again, and asks, “What was that about?”

Matteo genuinely does not know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Adding season 4 elements to my fanfic in hopes that Amira gets her own season? It's more likely than you think.
> 
> I was so overwhelmed by the number of comments on my last chapter !!! I tried to reply to all of them just to show how much I appreciate and love every single person who reads this story, and I'm so glad that it's coming together so well. I didn't expect to come up with a story that might be on the longer side, much less one I am confident I'll finish. Y'all are inspirational.


	5. from eden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter depicts major depression. In fact, it's most of the chapter. But I feel that it's important to address Matteo's MI, au or otherwise, and this is a really important chapter for him and it ends in a good place. Also, I wrote this in anticipation for today's Thursday reunion and David didn't even show so !!!! I'm hoping for like, a 1 am run to David's place or vis versa, but I'm also prepping my clown makeup as I write this.
> 
> So, with the clip, this will probably be extra sad, because I thought the clip would be happy. RIP. I try to time these but what is Druck even doing. But I'm posting anyway, and I hope it's good!
> 
> The song is "From Eden" by, you guessed it, Hozier, and definitely worth a contextual listen.

Matteo can’t remember which weekend in a row this has been that he’s spent high out of his mind, feeling numb, but it is Jonas who drags him out of the house. They don’t really do anything except eat a couple sandwiches that Jonas bought them that Matteo feels compelled to finish. He is only nibbling. He doesn’t feel all that hungry.

Weekends are like falling into a pattern these days. Drag through school on Monday and Tuesday, ditch a couple classes, try to put a little effort in to study with Amira on Wednesdays, and let himself fall slowly back into his hole until it’s Friday and he can spend all day in his room. He hasn’t been to German in weeks. After lunch it’s hard for Matteo to bring himself back to class.

He’s fine. It’s fine. It’s just the average up and down of an average person’s week with an average way of coping with the average amount of depression that hovers beneath his bloodstream when he’s not paying attention. This is just how it goes.

People help. Sometimes they are a bit much, and remind Matteo of everything he has the chance to lose or what he’s done wrong, but moments like now are nice.

Jonas helps, just sitting next to him, and although Matteo feels pathetic because he can’t even bring himself to talk, it’s nice knowing he is there. And Abdi and Carlos can help sometimes when they tell a really shitty joke that makes Matteo think there is a reason he became friends with them. Amira helps him focus on school. Sometimes, he even thinks that she might think he’s a little smart too. Hanna helps whenever she shows up, even though her presence reminds him of lots of things he’s fucked up in the past, because it’s nice to have a reminder that he is worth forgiveness. And hell, even Sara helps, because even though he might get panic attacks at the mention of her name and he is cruel and heartless to use her like he is doing, she gets what it’s like to be miserable and is kind anyway. Even newer than the rest, David helps because Matteo feels like he isn’t hiding when he’s with him.

He repeats all of this over and over in his head when he wants to believe something might be okay about himself after all. But like now, whenever he wants to try to find something positive, it’s when he doesn’t really think he’s worth all that trouble.

Jonas is watching him with his eyebrows furrowed.

“Problems with Sara?” he asks, because he doesn’t really know about anything and Matteo would like to keep it that way.

Matteo can only shake his head. Sara has been great. He has no reason to have problems with Sara.

Except that he’s gay and fooled her into believing he’s into her and he’s only going to break her heart, but if he break up with her, he’s going to be the odd man out, and then everyone is going treat him different or hate him and he’s going to die alone.

Matteo hates his thoughts half the time. Most the time. It’s fine. He is fine.

“Your mom?” Jonas asks, because he at least knows about that.

Matteo can only shrug. He really wishes he could talk. Or finish this sandwich that Jonas bought him only for it to probably end up as bird food. He feels awful, and still a bit high off the weed he had smoked before dragging himself here, and he can tell he smells like it too.

“Bro, you know you can talk to me, right?” Jonas asks hesitantly.

This is the second person to have told him this. Perhaps Matteo needs to get better at hiding how down he can get. He hates himself for feeling this shitty and causing people to worry.

 

Leonie has evidently been invited by Sara to meet Vampire City too. Matteo learns this as he heads to Sara’s to pick her up and finds them both giggling at the front steps of her doorway about how they are going to meet their idols. They are both too loud and Matteo hasn’t really improved since hanging out with Jonas, so by only a minute in, it’s a bit much.

But at least Sara doesn’t feel the need to talk to him as much with her best friend around. She gives him a short kiss in greeting and lots of happy little thank you’s but Matteo is mostly left to himself.

Not to be dramatic, but Matteo is literally dying.

“God, David is so hot,” Leonie is saying. Matteo has always dreaded the day that he actually agrees with something that comes out of her mouth and today is evidently not only the day he dies but also the day that they are finally on the same page about something. 

“How long has it been since you’ve had a crush on him?” Sara is teasing. “A year? Or was it two?”

Matteo debates the merits of stepping in front of a truck. That would be better than this small heartache feeling that suddenly starts seeping in as if it’s decided that it’s the one emotion that Matteo is allowed to feel other than super depressed. He digs his hands further into his baggy hoodie.

“I went to their first concert in Berlin,” Leonie says proudly. Matteo hates her. “Two years ago. I’ve been to so many of their concerts that I bet they could literally recognize me in a crowd.”

Matteo tries to tune them out but can’t. He can still hear Leonie talking.

“Do you think he’s cuter up close?” she is whispering conspiratorially to Sara.

Matteo sees Sara meet his eyes like they are sharing amusement on the subject and her eyes crinkle when she smiles. She presses a kiss to his cheek fondly, like she’s trying to cheer him up, and she is holding his hand. Matteo hadn’t noticed until now. “Not as cute as Matteo here.”

Leonie rolls her eyes, and restates herself, “I bet he’s cuter up close.”

This is a bet that Matteo knows she would win. He’s pictured David’s face close to his, their eyes tracking to each other’s mouths, so many times that he can repeat every detail. David’s eyelashes, the blush on his cheeks, the brown of his eyes, that goddamn septum piercing, and the full of his lips only a couple inches away…

“What about Laura?” Matteo asks, just to get the topic away from David.

He means something more along the lines of what she thinks of Laura in general because she’s so fixated on David and Matteo can't really handle that right now, or at all, but Leonie considers this and says, “She’s cute too,” without any hesitation. “But she’s had a girlfriend for almost two years, she’s said so in interviews. And David is so sweet… he’s always super genuine and vague about his dating, but we all know he’s single, even if he doesn’t say so.”

Matteo thinks it’s weird how she knows all this but has never had a conversation with him. He wonders if she knows that David’s favorite city is Detroit, and if that’s something he says idly in interviews or something personal he shared with Matteo. He wonders what she would think if she learned that David wasn’t sweet at all when he was trying, and completely succeeding, in kicking Matteo’s ass in video games.

Honestly, stepping in front of a truck might be his best option because lord knows how he will survive this. He tunes out Sara and Leonie as they walk.

 

Laura and David do not recognize Leonie from the crowd in their concerts. But they’re friendly, and Matteo hates friendly because that means talking and there’s enough happening in his head as it is. David doesn’t act weird around him. Neither does Laura. Matteo doesn’t know why he thought they might have when he brought his girlfriend to meet them. It probably has something to do with the fact that he hadn’t seen David since the party and Laura had given him a weird speech about not being a dick.

It’s too late. Matteo is a bit of a dick.

He’s ignoring Sara. To be fair, he is ignoring everyone, but Sara is trying to get his attention the most.

She drags him around the studio like Matteo hasn’t already seen it before, which she doesn’t know in the first place, and points out little details that Matteo doesn’t care about. Like what guitar David had played for what song at what concert, the little signatures on Laura’s piano that she had tweeted once, and an award for something or other on a shelf. He lets her drag him around.

David and Laura point some things out too. It would probably be weird if they didn’t but Matteo is pretty sure that Sara and Leonie already know whatever facts they could find in interviews and social media. Matteo was not a super fan but Sara and Leonie definitely were. He should not have agreed with Sara to ask about doing this, but it’s much too late now.

Within the first couple minutes, he has been abandoned to the couch while Sara and Leonie talk to David and Laura excitedly, asking questions about their new music, or what inspired certain songs, and when they’re playing again.

Leonie is flirting with David.

This is fine. Matteo is fine. He just can’t feel right now, but it’s been that way for a while, so it’s not situational. It’s also not worth worrying about, which is good because Matteo can’t bring himself to worry about anything except watch Leonie and David talk about some concert she’d attended.

“I think that you play amazingly,” Leonie is saying. Her hand is placed lightly on his arm and she is smiling.

“Erm, yeah,” David laughs, running his hands through his hair awkwardly. “Thanks.”

“No, I’m serious,” Leonie continues. “You’re like, my favorite musician of all time.”

“Well, Laura is very good at the keys too, so,” David offers a smile back at her.

“Ah, yes, Laura,” Leonie says, turning back towards the group because she has at least some subtlety. “You’re very good too.”

“Thank you,” Laura says. She looks like she wants to laugh. Her eyes are bright and she draws the conversation slowly from there to actual music and out of flirtatious territory.

“You should play us a song!” Sara eventually suggests. She’s biting the inside of her lip and turning to give Laura and David those puppy dog eyes that literally no one can say no to. Not even Matteo.

David’s eyes flicker over to Matteo in the corner and for the briefest second, his friendly smile falls, before he’s turning back to the group blinking and grinning like usual. Matteo knows it’s an act. He doesn’t know how he knows, he just knows that this is not the type of friendly he’s seen David be before. This is just to make people happy.

Matteo knows a lot about acting in order to make other people happy.

“Sure,” David says after exchanging glances with Laura.

They sit where Matteo and David had sat before, David with his guitar and Laura with her keyboard, and Sara runs to grab Matteo happily as if she hasn’t noticed how numb he’s been this whole time. Matteo doesn’t think he’s said more than a couple words.

He’s dragged over anyway with a, “Come on, they’re playing us a song!” and sits down in front of the stools next to Leonie. Sara makes herself comfortable draped across Matteo, kissing him softly while she’s still smiling that giant smile because he was the one who provided her with this opportunity, hadn’t he?

David clears his throat. Matteo can’t look anyone in the eye. He can feel Laura watching him, and thinks back to her words.  _ Don’t let figuring out who you are hurt people _ . Too fucking late, Laura. He knows who he is. That’s never been the problem.

“So, um, we can play one of the songs we’ve been working on this week?” David asks, looking towards Laura.

She narrows her eyes at him but agrees after a moment of a weird, studied pause. She adjusts herself on her keyboard, finding her finger positions, while David does the same with his guitar, and then nods at him.

“Wait,” Leonie says.

They all turn to stare at her, and for once she looks a bit embarrassed. “I was just thinking… David writes the songs, right? Like, his name is on the credits for everything, so why doesn’t he sing?”

“I don’t really sing,” David says softly, and Matteo knows that’s a lie.

“It’s just us,” Leonie pouts, because everyone in the room seems to get he doesn’t sing because he doesn’t like to be the main attention on stage, and everyone in the room is the type of person to notice him anyway.

“We won’t record it,” Sara promises. She’s still wrapped around Matteo.

David glances at Matteo again, does some face journey that Matteo doesn’t have the energy to dissect, and then plasters on that fake smile again as he turns towards Sara and Leonie, with a light, “I’ll leave the singing up to Laura.”

It’s the end of that conversation. Laura looks a little relieved at the decision, for reasons Matteo doesn’t want to figure out. And when David starts playing the guitar, and Matteo is immediately hit with the loneliness of it. It’s the loneliness he feels now, and the loneliness he’s only seen glimpses of in David.

This is David’s song, even if he isn’t singing it. He isn’t looking at Matteo.

_ Babe _ , Laura starts out in her soft alto. She’s added a few piano keys but the guitar leads the song. It’s ethereal, even as a beginning studio version. 

_ There's something tragic about you _

_ Something so magic about you _

_ Don't you agree? _

 

_ Babe, there's something lonesome about you _

_ Something so wholesome about you _

_ Get closer to me  _

She’s watching Matteo carefully as she sings, and she isn’t being subtle about it. Matteo doesn’t dare look over at David, both because he is afraid of what he’ll see and afraid of the implications Laura might see. David is probably watching his fingers on his strings, not at any of them, and forgetting himself in the music. Laura, on the other hand, feels all knowledgeable, like she’s staring into his soul. Matteo wonders if there will ever be a time when that isn’t terrifying.

_ Babe, there's something wretched about this _

_ Something so precious about this _

_ Where to begin _

 

_ Babe, there's something broken about this _

_ But I might be hoping about this. _

_ Oh, what a sin _

 

_ To the strand a picnic plan for you and me _

_ A rope in hand for your other man to hang from a tree  _

Matteo feels punched in the stomach. Laura drones on something being familiar, but there is a buzzing in Matteo’s ears that he can’t get rid of. This is what feels familiar. This song. The loneliness, the sin, the final line before his body tunes everything out at all.

He looks over at David. David is not looking at him. He’s harmonizing with Laura, and looking at Leonie with a smile like this is all a joke and he didn’t write any of it, but he’s not looking at Sara and Matteo, which feels more meaningful than anything else he could have actually done.

Matteo didn’t want any of this to happen today. He didn’t want any of this to happen at all.

The song ends. Sara and Leonie clap and grin. Compliments are exchanged, mostly from Leonie towards David. Sara is talking Matteo’s ear off. Laura raises an eyebrow at him.

“Alright girls,” she finally says calmly. “How about I show you where I go when I want to avoid David, yah? Girls trip.”

“Do you think you could show me how to do your smokey eye?” Sara asks as they walk off.

It’s silent in the studio when it’s only David and Matteo left.

“Sara’s cute,” David says.

Matteo shrugs, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets. She probably is.

David purses his lips, kicking at the floor for just a second, before joining Matteo on the ground. He looks like he wants to say something, but only ends up adding, “I can see why you’d date her.”

And maybe it’s been too long of Matteo trying to hide himself away, or too many of these same conversations, or the depression that he’s in that’s been following him around for days that he can’t seem to shake this time, but he’s done. He’s just so fucking done. He slides to the floor until he’s just laying there, running a hand up over his face, and says, “Thanks, I’m gay.”

Who’s David going to tell? The whole world? He probably could, but what would he say? “Hey, this friend of my friend’s sister just told me that he’s gay today lol his name is Matteo Florenzi and he’s got a girlfriend and a big fat crush on me”?

Matteo may have been spiraling lately but even he finds that concept a bit ridiculous.

David does laugh, but a bit breathy like he is very surprised but also just the tiniest bit amused at how Matteo has chosen to come out. Matteo isn’t even sure he’s said it out loud before. He does not remove his palms from over his eyes.

“Okay,” David says.

It’s simple enough to shock some of the numbness out of Matteo. He hasn’t ever expected such a simple response from the millions of times he’s pictured telling people. He lets his hands fall and turns his head on the floor to find David sitting next to him with an almost invisible smile.

“Okay?” Matteo asks dumbly.

“Yeah. Okay,” David snorts. “What would you like me to do, throw you a pride parade?”

“No.”

Matteo is still staring. And then, because it occurs to him that David has just given him a bit of a dickish response considering it’s his first time coming out, he adds a bit numbly, “Leonie thinks you’re sweet.”

“Are you saying I’m not?” David asks with a tilt of his head. His eyes are twinkly and cute and brown. His smile is not fake. The comment seems distinctly flirty.

When Matteo doesn’t say anything, something teasing in his eyes fade until they’re staring back at each other and David carefully takes his hand.

“Matteo,” he says seriously. “It’s okay.”

Matteo knows this. He just didn’t know it could be this easy. Nothing has changed, but he is closer to being himself without worrying whether or not he will be treated differently because of it.

David doesn’t ask him what he’s going to do about Sara. Instead, they just sit on the floor, Matteo’s hands in David’s, as he starts to feel again.


	6. almost (sweet music)

When Matteo finally wakes up without feeling like death, he slowly starts to get his life in order. He showers before school and shoves his laundry in a basket after pulling on jeans that actually fit and a loose sweater. He manages to put something together for breakfast, even if that is just cheesy toast, instead of stealing what he can from his flatmates.

At school, he says hello to his friends with a smile, and exchanges jokes and cool handshakes. Jonas ruffles his hair but Matteo doesn’t ever bother doing anything with it anyway, depressed or not, so it doesn’t make a difference. They complain about the math teacher who assigns so much work that it’s hard to keep up with. Matteo is fairly certain he is failing that class, but at least Abdi is funny when he does an impression of her. Carlos tells Matteo, along with the rest of the group, that he should try out a health spa because apparently that’s what he and Kiki did and it worked wonders. Whatever that means.

It’s not easy. He tries to pay attention in class but he’s spent so many class hours high out of his mind that he doesn’t know the concepts that they are building off of much less what they’re actually learning. It makes him frustrated enough to want to dig out another joint and not bother. Once someone is in a pattern, it’s hard to break out of it.

But Amira sits down next to him in biology, takes one look at the mess of papers and scribbled notes he has tried shoving into his bag, and says, “I can help you with maths, if you want.”

Matteo looks up groggily from where he has dumped himself onto his desk in exhaustion and stares. “What about biology?”

“Matteo,” Amira says seriously. “You may not have a lot going on in your head, but you know biology. We’ve studied every Wednesday and you’ve managed to keep up even when you spend the rest of the week doing nothing and this-” she pulls out one of Matteo’s crumpled pages of notes and smooths it out onto the table “- is trying. Which means that I’m willing to help you with it, as long as you continue putting in the effort.”

Matteo takes back the notebook paper and shoves it back in his bag, because if she sees the complete catastrophe of him attempting math this morning, she might try to take it back. Amira truly is a godsend.

“You think I’m good at biology,” he says a little gleefully.

Amira turns her attention to the front of the classroom but Matteo can still see her smile. It doesn’t disappear.

“Maybe,” she says, before side eyeing him. “Don’t get lazy.”

“Why would I worry about getting lazy,” Matteo grins. He leans back in his chair and throws his legs up on the table. “I’m a genius.”

“Let’s not go that far,” Amira chides. She turns toward him in her seat for the briefest second as the teacher takes her place and says, “You’re smart, Matteo. You just have to work harder for it.”

“Feet down, Mr. Florenzi,” the teacher says from the front of the classroom, and just like that the lesson begins. Matteo fumbles back into his seat and leans over his textbook with his arm in between he and Amira as he messes with his hair to block her from seeing his smile turn soft and sappy.

 

There’s a moment that Matteo realizes that in order to be happy, he needs to get rid of what makes him unhappy. And that’s the hardest part.

He realizes this the moment that Sara approaches him at lunch and the boys make little catcall noises as she plants herself by him. He realizes when she kisses him. He realizes that he wants his body to stop screaming,  _ fake _ , every time something like this happens, and if it means that his friends might treat him different, so be it. Things might not have to change. Hell, Jonas would go to a pride parade every other weekend if there was one, and Carlos sometimes talked about a cousin who was gay, and Abdi… was Abdi, which meant that he was more perceptive than people gave him credit for.

“Hey,” Sara greets with a smile, throwing her arms around his shoulders.

“Hey,” Matteo greets back, and then makes up his mind. “Can we talk? In private?”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Sara agrees. Her eyebrows furrow in confusion, which is a more reasonable reaction that Abdi is giving, which is slapping Carlos in the chest pointedly and wiggling his eyebrows.

They leave to the back of the school, to the courtyard outside where a couple students are wandering in for the last class of the day, and Matteo has no idea how to do this. Breaking up with someone isn’t even something he has imagined he’ll do because he hasn’t ever had the motivation to do it. It’s easier to go along with things than make something happen himself.

Sara is looking up at him expectantly, offers him a little smile, then asks, “What’s up?”

Fuck. Matteo doesn’t even have a good reason for this. Not one he wants to offer her right now without raising a bunch of questions about himself that he doesn’t want to answer, or even has answers to. He runs his hands through his hair, pacing for just a second, and it’s enough for Sara to shift into worry.

“Matteo?” she asks, putting her hand on his arm. “Are you okay? Is it your mother?”

What was with it and people asking about his mother? The whole thing with his mother sucks, yes, and he had moved out in order to preserve his own sanity in a house that seemed like it was going to shit, and so his whole family thing was a mess now, but it wasn’t - Matteo didn’t spend all day thinking about his mother. Or maybe he did, and maybe he hoped she was taking her antidepressants every time she texted him another bible quote, but when whatever anyone did these days made him feel shitty, she was just another one of those people. Matteo had to remind himself they were trying, even when they didn’t understand him.

Even still, he latches onto the excuse and runs.

“Yeah, it’s my mom,” he agrees, flattening down his hair and turning to her. His fingers tick anxiously and he shoves them in his pockets. “She, um… she’s not been doing great lately, and between that and- I don’t think I have time for a girlfriend.”

Sara blinks at him, taking a step back to shake her head a little, shocked. Matteo doesn’t have any legitimate reason to break up with Sara when looking at their relationship. They were fine. They were mostly fine. Sure, Matteo ignored her every once in a while, or avoided having sex with her, but they were also that sweet couple that people obnoxiously cooed at in the hallway.

“Is this you breaking up with me?”

Matteo looks up towards the sky. He can't look at her. She looks upset, and while Matteo has seen her upset before, he’d never been able to face it. He’d ignore her all weekend instead, and ignore her until she dropped the whole issue of him never reaching her back.

“Erm,” he has to move his hands. Move something. He scratches the back of his neck. “Ja.”

“Bullshit!” Sara explodes. He takes a step back too, forced to look at her in her anger, and the frustrated tears welling up in her eyes. “We all have family issues, Matteo, you can’t just break up with someone because of them. Did I tell you that my family is officially moving? We’re going to be on welfare, but I’m not letting that make me break up with you!”

Matteo can only shrug helplessly.

Sara waits for some answer, her hands shoved into her sleeves like little fists, and before she can turn into the person pacing, Matteo offers a, “Sorry.”

She huffs, and then sniffles, looking up towards the sky like Matteo had, but like it’s going to stop the gravity of her tears from spilling. And then Sara looks at him, sets her mouth into a hard straight line, and says, “You’re an asshole, Matteo Florenzi.”

Just like that she’s off, probably going to find Leonie or someone to rant or cry to or something. Matteo is left standing in the courtyard, and the feeling of putting himself back together slowly fades as her words sink in. Because she’s right. He is an asshole. He hurts people.

News travels through its usual outlets. By that, he means Sara tells Leonie, and Leonie tells Kiki, who tells Carlos and probably the girl squad, who tells the boy squad, and Matteo is honestly wondering what happened to the days when everyone didn't know everyone else's business within minutes.

The one thing that comes out of it is that he doesn’t have to tell anyone himself.

Within the hour, along with an exploding group chat, he gets a couple messages from Jonas:

  * “Bro, Carlos says you broke up with Sara???”
  * “I thought you said you were good”
  * “You can talk to me.”



An hour after that, Jonas sends a singular text message:

  * “You okay, dude?”



Matteo paces. He overthinks. He remembers Sara calling him an asshole and wonders if telling Jonas the real reason is even worth it. He types out multiple messages that never send. And then he takes a deep breath, makes up his mind for the second time that day, and sends:

  * “Tell you about it this weekend?”



It’s short and simple. He doesn't have to tell Jonas anything that he doesn't want to. He can still back out.

Jonas replies immediately, with an extravagant amount of emojis and enthusiasm:

  * “Hell yeah, dude. Video games and beer, on me!”
  * “Here for you.”



And for the first time, Matteo thinks that he might actually go through with it.

 

Matteo is in the kitchen helping Linn cook dinner when the buzzer for the flatshare goes off.

“Hans, are you expecting someone over?” Mia calls from her room.

They can hear Hans jostling around in the living room, before approaching the doorway, with a loudly confused, “No,” tossed further into the apartment.

Linn and Matteo exchange curious glances, and Hans buzzes the person up without using the speaker with the carelessness that usually presents itself when he wants to be dramatic. Mia even pokes her head out of her room to look down the hallway. It’s a rarity that they are all home at one time, much less paying attention to the same thing, but mystery, as it turns out, is a unifying force. 

No one knocks on their door. 

"Maybe Mrs. Fischer forgot her keys again?" Mia suggests.

And then the door knocks. Hans doesn’t bother pretending he’s been standing only a foot away since the minute he pressed the buzzer. In less than a second, the doorknob is turning, and Hans is giving a very peppy greeting. “Hi! Welcome to our humble abode-”

“Hey,” says an awkward voice. “Is Matteo home?”

Matteo cannot see the doorway from where he is standing by the stove but he can see Hans’ jaw literally drop. But he didn’t even have to see that to know who was at the door. He had only had to hear the first second of his voice.

Hans looks over towards Matteo with the least subtle  _ what the fuck  _ expression Matteo has ever seen in his life, before clearing his throat and looking towards the person in the doorway with an grin that suggests that this is quite possibly going to be the most embarrassing thing Matteo will ever experience.

“Yes,” Hans says smugly, arranging his posture accordingly. “He is. Someone -” he looks purposefully towards Matteo “-didn’t tell us you’d be coming, but I’m sure you could stay for dinner?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay-”

“Oh, but I insist! I’m Hans, Matteo’s flatmate and guru, and honestly, it’d just be an honor to have you in this household. Vampire City’s album, Runaways? Life changing. And you always speak so candidly about -”

This is why Matteo hadn’t wanted his flatmates over when David had come over the first time. Before Hans can say any more, Matteo flies from the kitchen and interrupts with a very direct, “Na?”

“Na,” David greets with the smallest of smiles. He is shifting back and forth on his toes, with his hands shoved in that black hoodie of his, and he looks a bit uncomfortable with Hans standing so close to him in the doorway. He’s wearing the beanie again. And today, Matteo can truly appreciate the fact that he looks adorable. And hot as hell.

David clears his throat, with a glance at Hans, but then all his attention is on Matteo. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you were okay, after… the other day but, um, sorry if this is a bad time?”

He turns to leave, but before Matteo can really help himself, he is shouting, “No!”

Matteo quickly reaches for something stable to offer as he hovers by the kitchen entry and takes a few steps out into the hall. “You, uh. Could stay for dinner, if you want?”

David turns and looks back and forth between Hans and Matteo, and seems to realize there are two other faces watching them as well, but after a tense moment, he smiles. “Sure.”

 

David fits.

It’s a thought that catches Matteo so completely off guard that he has to pause from where he is sitting on the couch as they all play a board game to take it in.

So far tonight, David has complimented Linn on her pasta sauce and her cooking multiple times, and Matteo knows that like himself, she does not take praise lightly. And David kept saying nice things, without thought, to everyone, and Matteo is unsure if he’s just nervously overcompensating because he’s in a foreign household or because he’s just that way. And then Mia mentions the homelessness statistics at the LGBT+ concert benefit, which gets everyone involved in a super social political conversation in which they are all a bit gay.

Which is fair, considering, everyone at the table could probably make up a good portion of LGBT+ acronyms. Even with Straight Matteo, who doesn’t contribute much to the conversation anyway.

And now they are playing a board game and Matteo can tell that David is trying is best not to be a competitive little shit but minute by minute since he’s been here, he’s slowly relaxed into the confident boy that Matteo is starting to understand is only a little part of his personality. David may be confident but he also cares what people think of him. He adjusts himself accordingly.

Matteo wants the flatshare to be a place where David can just be David. Minute by minute, it is.

“Butterfly,” Hans says, knocking his knee. “It is your turn.”

Matteo looks down at the board and then back around at the people he’s adopted into something of a home away from home. And then he looks at David, who is not part of that, but who he’d desperately like to be. He wishes that David would want to be too. And part of him thinks that he could, because David may have Laura and millions of fans around the world, but he can still seem a bit lonely. He seeks out Matteo for some reason.

“Actually, I’m gonna go to my room,” he says, standing. “You guys can continue on without me.”

David looks up from the game, studies Matteo's face with flickering eyes, and then moves to stand up too. “Do you mind if I join? I did come here to talk to you.”

He sounds hesitant. Matteo is always caught off guard when he seems hesitant. It usually means something important.

“Uh, yeah,” Matteo agrees, nodding towards the direction of his room.

“Nice to meet you guys,” David says to the group left around the living room table.

Mia smiles, Linn waves, and Hans calls after them as Matteo leads David into his room, “Invite your friend over again sometime!”

Matteo slams the door on him, which is a bit dramatic, but one has to be when matching Hans’ drama. As soon as the door bangs closed, he is hit with the sudden realization that David is alone with him in his room. It’s terrifyingly quiet.

David doesn’t look at him for a while, too busy focusing on looking around Matteo’s bedroom, and Matteo has never been so grateful to have been able to pick up his laundry in the morning. But then David sits down on Matteo’s bed and doesn’t look away from him, and Matteo’s brain short circuits. David. Bed. Gorgeous boy. On his bed. Alone.

David bites his lip, his gaze flickering somewhere down too fast for Matteo to do anything but comprehend it, and then he says, “I like your flatmates.”

“Thanks,” Matteo says, forcing himself to breath out something of a laugh. He’s weird and jittery and can’t sit down even though it looks like David wants him to if only to stop the weird thing Matteo is doing nervously with his fingers. “I think Hans was surprised to see you.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know if your flatmates would be here, I just wanted to check to make sure you were okay.”

If he was- and then he remembers a couple days ago, coming out to David and being completely done with everything around him. It had been his worst slide into depression yet. He's sees why it might cause for some concern, if anyone even noticed at all. But David had noticed, which is enough to calm Matteo's energy just a little.

“Yeah,” Matteo says, and then sits down on the bed next to him. “I’m doing better.”

“Good,” David smiles.

With his goal in making sure that Matteo is okay complete, he half expects David to leave. But they’re both just sitting there, unsure of where to go. David looks down at his hands, and continues, “Erm. I’m sorry about the song. If that made you uncomfortable, or something, because I know the timing but was not great, and I didn’t mean to-”

“Why would I be uncomfortable?” Matteo asks, interrupting.

It’s just now that Matteo remembers. He had almost forgotten David playing and Laura singing his words because Matteo's depression had drowned over him again only a minute after. It had been a heartbreaking and lonely song but it hadn’t made him uncomfortable. He had been barely feeling anything that day and yet the song had struck through to him if only for a moment. He had felt seen. David had a habit of doing that.

“Because it was about you,” David says, and Matteo is struck through the heart again.

“It was-” Matteo can’t even finish the thought. He thinks he had realized but never connected the dots.

“I thought it was obvious,” David says sheepishly. Matteo knows he is staring but he can’t really bring himself to look away. Not when there is someone so perfect right in front of him. “So I’m sorry, if that, you know-”

Matteo kisses him because he can’t hold back any longer. David freezes under his touch and then softens as his hand moves to Matteo’s neck to pull him closer. It’s the first real kiss that Matteo has ever had. He’s had hundreds with Sara but this is the only one that he wants to continue forever. He never wants to let David go.

So he doesn’t. 

 

Later, after David leaves, Hans catches him in the hallway and whispers, "You know David Schreibner?"

"Umm yeah," Matteo answers, just as quiet. Mia and Linn have retreated to their rooms. He glances at his own bedroom where he'd just spent the last hour making out with and exchanging numbers, finally, with David, and decides that if he's going to start telling people he's gay, he might as well get practice. "We actually have a thing. I think."

"Oh," Hans says, pulling away to study Matteo's face. But whatever he finds makes him grin and all of a sudden Matteo is wrapped in a giant hug. "My little butterfly is sprouting wings!"

Matteo is grinning a little himself. In fact, he hasn't stopped grinning all night. "Thanks, Hans."

Hans takes him by the shoulders, looks him in the eye, and his expression softens. "I'm proud of you, Matteo. And very happy for you."

"Thanks," Matteo mumbles, and then he looks towards the door to the flat that David had left through. He wants him back already. He looks towards Hans hesitantly. "Can you not tell anyone maybe? I don't know... we haven't really talked about it, so."

"Of course not," Hans assures him with another hug. He's a very huggy person. And then he sighs, as dramatically as usual, and says, "You went big, butterfly. David Schreibner?"

"Go big or go home?" Matteo grins, because he knows his words are stupid and barely cover what is happening.

Hans laughs, agrees, and then shoves Matteo towards his bedroom again so that he can go to bed for the night. Matteo still has school tomorrow, and somehow that’s the thing that feels like a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No notes for this one. Just that my beans are happy.


	7. as it was

It had only been a year ago that Matteo had a crush on Jonas Augustin. It had been more than a crush. He was the first boy Matteo had ever really liked, and by the time Hanna came into the picture, Matteo was already halfway in love with him.

It was the biggest cliche — falling in love with your best friend. Hell, it was the biggest gay cliché too. To fall in love with your best friend and create a love triangle that will never be fully realized because your best friend is straight. And dating a woman.

The woes of unrequited love.

It was like being hit in the face with two different realizations. One, Matteo was completely and utterly gay. Two, everyone else around him wasn’t, and the person who he so desperately wanted was not an exemption to that rule.

Matteo did terrible things that year. Those terrible things still followed him today.

Jonas had been dating Leonie. That was fine. But then Matteo had noticed Hanna, who blushed every time Jonas talked to her and would tell awkward jokes and would always be sidelined with Matteo while their best friends made out. And Jonas noticed Hanna too. 

One thing led to another, and suddenly Hanna and Jonas were in love, and Leonie was out of the picture, and Matteo had thought: how unfair. He’d been there the whole entire time. He and Jonas had been friends since grade school but the minute Jonas was interested in girls, Matteo was not only sidelined but not even an option.

He hadn’t done it because he thought that Jonas would suddenly realize he was bi or do a complete 180 and realize that he had liked Matteo the whole time. Matteo knew his best friend and had known that his crush was impossible. And that was okay. Jonas could love whoever he wanted to and Matteo would be fine.

It was the knowledge that Hanna had stolen him. She hadn’t even stolen Jonas from Matteo, although as far as time spent with each other that was slowly up for debate, but it was just that she had been able to swoop in out of nowhere and Jonas had fallen in love with her. 

Matteo would never get to do that.

And then he had to watch as they were happy together, watch as Jonas started spending less time at Matteo’s, and watch them fall deeper and deeper together. He had even accidentally walked in on them together which was something he had needed burned from his eyelids for weeks after.

So when Hanna had told him that she had cheated, Matteo used the information to light a match that ended up setting off an entire bomb.

The school hated her when they found out. Leonie already hated her from before, which meant so did Sara, but then the boy Hanna had kissed had a girlfriend who also hated her, and everyone called Hanna a slut until she almost moved schools and Matteo hated himself.

Matteo hadn’t even disliked Hanna. She was one of his best friends. They had united when they were sidelined for Jonas and Leonie and then had kept being friends when she started dating Jonas. He had just wanted the pain of seeing her kiss him so often to disappear.

They aren’t friends anymore. Not really. Because she found out Matteo was the one who told her secret to the entire school and that’s the sort of thing that ruins trust. Hanna had assumed it was because Matteo had a crush on her, and Matteo hadn’t corrected her.

Hanna and Jonas broke up, Matteo had started dating Sara, and everything was a little fucked up after that. Jonas had been in a really bad place for a while. Matteo had slipped into self hatred. Hanna had forgiven him because in the end they are one and the same - Hanna stealing Jonas away from Leonie and Matteo stealing Hanna away from Jonas - but it was their secret.

Until now.

The problem with telling Jonas this story is that it reveals a lot more than the fact that Matteo is gay. It shows the worst of Matteo’s character, how he actively ruined a precious relationship of Jonas’, and most terrifyingly, the fact that Matteo had once had a crush on him. But Matteo is fixing everything, or at least trying, and he’s starting from the beginning. If Jonas is going to have something to hate Matteo for, he might as well give him all of it.

Friday comes too soon. 

Part of it is maybe that David still hasn’t replied to the “bonjorno, it’s Matteo” text message he had sent after his encounter with Hans in the hallway. Which was fine, David was probably busy producing music, or writing it, or whatever it was that famous musicians did with their lives. It was just that it had been almost a week. Matteo had waited almost all the weekdays. 

When Matteo shows up to Jonas' house, he can’t wait for the sweet release of playing video games and drinking beer without having to worry about anything. His confidence on telling Jonas anything unfortunately was slowly running dry with every messageless second.

Luckily, Jonas does not ask what is up.

They pop open a couple beers in the kitchen before retreating to the living room to grab their controllers and play Mario Kart. Jonas cackles as he chooses Luigi before Matteo can even move. But at this point in their relationship, after so many times of this happening, Matteo only rolls his eyes and selects Princess Peach. She had once been a joke character the boys had made him play, because apparently blondes befitted blondes, but Matteo swears she’s more agile than the other characters. And Matteo needs that luck. Badly.

Jonas has run circles around him three times over and they’re both at least a beer in, when Jonas hits Princess Peach with a turtle shell, again, and she goes twirling off the Rainbow Road. Matteo groans and falls back on the couch. Jonas grins over at him from the screen.

Matteo wonders how easy it would be to tell him right now.  _ Hey Jonas, I’m gay, _ just like that. 

Matteo’s phone weighs heavy in his pocket. Nothing from David. And usually Sara would have texted by now, but they’re broken up now and also she thinks he’s an asshole, which is a completely fair analysis. 

It's not for any particular reason or sudden text that comes through that Matteo remembers Hanna. He doesn’t know why his brain goes to her, but it does remind him being an asshole is forgivable. At the very least, not everyone abandoned him after knowing something he did wrong, unlike his dad after learning about Matteo’s mother’s depression or David, apparently, after Matteo kissed him.

Princess Peach spawns back onto the road, and he turns his attention back to the screen to get her started again. Matteo forces himself to casually ask, “Remember when you and Hanna broke up because someone told the school about her cheating?”

The game is paused before Matteo can even get Princess Peach around the closest bend, and Jonas is staring at him incredulously. “You think we broke up because I found out she had cheated?”

“Umm.” This feels like a trick question. “Yeah?”

“Bro,” Jonas says, shaking his head. “No. It’s like, I get it. Why she kissed dude Sam. I think we would have been okay if it had just been that. But it was complicated, it was- When you start a relationship the way we did, it creates a lot of insecurities.”

“Oh.” 

Jonas is still looking at him weird. “Why?”

Matteo can’t really answer. Not when there’s all this pressure on him to say something. He shrugs. He’s good at that. Shrugging things away.

Jonas eyes widen with some kind of realization. “Shit, dude, did Sara cheat on you?”

Matteo is so shocked by this conclusion and the idea that Sara would ever cheat on anyone ever, that he responses immediately with a resounding, “Nein!”

“Did you cheat on Sara?”

Matteo doesn’t know if it counts as cheating if he was pining after David while he was with Sara. Probably not. David was entirely out of his league up until Monday night and he even hasn’t texted back, which probably means that he’s still out of Matteo’s league and might not even want him anymore, but that’s a place that Matteo has been trying not to fall into the past couple days. David is busy. Besides, cheating wasn’t really the problem at all.

“Nein!”

“Okay,” Jonas says simply. He leans back on the couch patiently with no sign of resuming the video game. He takes a swig of beer. Matteo follows suit, and then they’re both just sitting in a comfortable silence. Jonas waits and Matteo collects his thoughts.

It takes a minute, but Matteo is finally able to admit, “I was the one that told.”

“On Hanna?” Jonas automatically asks.

Matteo nods miserably as he stares down at the neck of his beer bottle. He doesn’t drink any.

“Okay,” Jonas finally says, and then there’s a pause like he’s not sure if he wants to ask but does anyway. “Why?”

The words drag out of his mouth, “I had a crush.”

“On Hanna?” Jonas asks again.

Matteo’s eyes roll to the top of his head. Must he always fight heteronormativity? The answer is evidently yes. He shakes his head.

“Oh,” Jonas says. Matteo doesn’t know how long it takes for Jonas to process this, or how he’s processing it at all, because he can’t look in his direction. But eventually, he hears Jonas ask, “Do you still have a crush on me?”

Matteo snorts and rolls on the couch to shove at Jonas indignantly. Jonas is grinning like he’s just messing with him, and only then can Matteo crack a smile and roll his eyes at him, “No way, dude. I wouldn’t want to inflate your ego.”

“Can’t I just be flattered?” Jonas pouts, and all the pressure deflates from Matteo’s chest at his nonchalance. “Bro. I’m honored.”

“Bro,” Matteo mocks, before shoving him in the face again, “Fuck off.”

There’s only a brief pause before Matteo adds hesitantly, “So you’re cool? About the whole, breaking up you and Hanna thing?”

Jonas looks down at his controller, his grin waning, but then he looks up and gives a careful shrug and a quieter smile. “Yeah. I mean, that was a dick move, but you didn’t break us up. We broke us up. And when we get back together, it’ll be without having to worry about basing our relationship off stealing someone away.”

When we get back together. Matteo wishes that he had that kind of quiet confidence about a relationship. That when they were pulled apart, they’d always end up back together again.

He checks his phone subconsciously, a habit developed over the past couple days when his head got stuck somewhere. No new messages.

“So you broke up with Sara because…” Jonas asks, drawing Matteo from his phone. He looks like he knows the answer now, he is just waiting for Matteo to say it.

Matteo does. It slips off the tongue easily with no energy at all. “I’m gay.”

“Cool,” Jonas grins, tapping his beer bottle against Matteo’s. He turns back towards the screen and presses play the moment Princess Peach drives straight off of the road again. And then he cackles, glancing back at Matteo. “You going to play or what?”

 

Matteo sends David a meme later that night that he thinks might be funny, tries sending a message taking it back a couple hours later after overthinking too long, and then spends the rest of the weekend regretting it and checking his messages for any indication that he hasn’t just blown the small chance of David replying in the first place. 

Hans keeps giving him a sympathetic look whenever Matteo glances down at his phone when he is around, and Matteo hates it. He shouldn’t have told Hans anything. He is pretty sure Hans is only seconds away from cornering him when they are alone together in the house and giving him some kind of gay advice pep talk.

He gets a couple texts from his mother. One is another bible quote. Another says that she loves him. She wants him to visit. Matteo does not reply. At the moment, and basically anytime he reflects on it, love does not feel very patient or kind, so her chosen bible verse does not sit well with Matteo. Most bible verses don’t.

Matteo throws his phone in his room after that and loses it under the covers. And then he rolls a joint. He is able to make it the rest of the day feeling high and numb before he heads into the kitchen for the messiest snack he can find and runs into Linn and Mia.

Mia frowns at him. But Linn just looks at him, silent and unexpectant.

Linn and Matteo have an unspoken agreement. They are not allowed to be depressed when the other one isn’t. Matteo goes to school. Linn has her hobbies. They keep busy. But all too often, they’re both locked away in their rooms letting the world wash over them. Linn’s been doing better. Matteo… is working on it.

He smokes the rest of what he has rolled up on his balcony that night and lets it float out into the sky. He doesn’t roll another one. He stays outside until he feels cold and until his head turns clear and his heart starts fruitlessly hoping and simultaneously aching again.

On Sunday, Matteo’s only message is from Amira saying she can’t study on Wednesday. She wants to know if he can tomorrow. He sends back a simple thumbs up because he has learned that she will gladly not study with him at all if he does not reply.

He spends the rest of the day with Linn watching shitty movies on the television set but at least he isn’t smoking. He isn’t checking his phone either. It’s somewhere under his covers again and Matteo promised himself he would only dig it out if he needs it. It’s a useless exercise anyway. By the end of the night, he hasn’t missed anything.

 

Amira promises there is no one at her house as they take the bus from school on Monday. It’s been one week since the best day of Matteo’s entire existence, and since being ghosted entirely. It is not fun.

He makes Amira promise that next time they study, they are going to a cafe.

Unfortunately, Matteo has the habit of consistently underestimating life’s ability just to fuck with him because the instant they step into Amira’s house, he immediately hears her ask, “David? What are you doing here?”

Matteo freezes. He’s still in the entryway where they both can’t see him and part of him is tempted to run for the door. The other part of him really wants to see David. Maybe he really has been busy for a week. David will smile at him when he walks in and it’ll all be fine. They can both pretend that Matteo didn’t send him a subpar meme and start over.

“I left my beanie here the other day hanging out with the boys,” David says around the corner, casually blowing Matteo’s excuse that he might have been busy into a thousand little shards. Matteo slumps back against the door. Death would be better than this. “Elias said the door would be unlocked. What are you doing home early?”

Matteo is just about to escape through the door and text Amira some kind of excuse when she says, “Matteo and I are studying today.”

He feels like that’s his signal to make himself known but he’s made himself known quite a bit more than usual over the past week or so and Matteo is kind of done with it. It leads to weird, awkward situations like this, where two people have made out and then the super cool popular one completely ignores the sad depressed memelord forever and ever until they are one day forced to interact through mutual friends.

Matteo doesn’t want to make David interact with him if he doesn’t want to. But he’s also a desperate little shit who wants to kiss David again, or at least see how David feels about this whole situation for himself, so Matteo straightens out from against the door and pretends to be trying to find something in his backpack like he hadn’t heard them at all as he pushes himself into the room.

“Amira? I forgot my textbook at home, can I borrow-”

Pausing is not part of his Oscar-worthy performance. But when he looks up from his bag, it is not Amira directly in front of him, but David. He was heading for the door, beanie twisted in between his palms, and he’s only a couple inches away from where Matteo has almost crashed into him. At the sight of Matteo, David’s cheeks redden as he shifts his eyes away guiltily.

It at least further answers the question of whether or not David had ignored him on purpose.

They are the same height, Matteo notices from this close. They are usually sitting. They certainly hadn't been standing a week ago when they had escaped to Matteo's room. David still looks like the David that Matteo has come to know, with a loose sweater underneath that black hoodie and his hair lazily flopping in his face. It’s the David that Matteo had kissed. At some point that night, David had laughed and pinned Matteo to the bed to kiss him senseless. His grin had been full of sunlight. Even now, when David finally looks at him again, his gaze slips down to Matteo’s lips like they are both remembering the last time they were together.

“We’ve got the same problems anyway,” Amira says obliviously, setting her bag down at the kitchen table. “We can share the pages.”

Matteo looks away first. He throws his bag on a nearby chair and slouches down into another one across from where Amira is pulling out her things. Then he forces out a, “Cool.”

Amira glances up at Matteo for a half second before focusing her attention on David a casual, “The girls want you to throw a party with Matteo. With Laura there too. Apparently, you showed up at Mia’s last week?”

“Oh, um…” David tosses a glance at Matteo too, albeit for different reasons than making sure Matteo is pulling out his class notes. He is wringing the beanie between his hands like it’ll steady him. “Yeah.”

Matteo is less casual. He groans and falls forward onto the table, running one hand over his face, before complaining, “Why don’t your friends know that you know them too? He and Laura are at your place more than half the time I come over.”

“I like my privacy,” Amira defends.

“Yeah, but aren’t they going to find out eventually?” Matteo grumbles. “I just think it’s really stupid how you pretend like you don’t know them. Like, they’re just people.”

David clears his throat awkwardly, reminding Matteo that he’s still in the room, and Matteo faceplants onto the table to hide his embarrassed blush. Matteo hates speaking up. He’d rather just let someone else do it, but the whole Amira hiding Laura and David thing is stupid. She’s evidently known them a while from even before they were famous. It seems she’s hiding a large chunk of her life when she doesn’t tell her friends or if they never visit her house on the off chance someone might be there. Matteo wonders how much she tells people in general.

He wonders if the girl squad knows about Yousef.

Amira looks between the two of them and then narrows her eyes. It is quiet for a long while. When Matteo risks a glance at David, he is ducking his head with that small private smile. Matteo’s heart warms at the sight.

“Fine,” Amira decides. “I guess they’re bound to know somehow. But we can’t have a party here. No alcohol.”

“I don’t know if-” David is protesting, but Matteo is already snatching his chance.

He leans across the table challengingly, “You can have it at the flatshare if you invite your brother and his friends too.”

Amira narrows her eyes. “Why?”

Matteo is not an expert or something, but what he has slowly begun to learn is this. Telling people things is freeing. He told Jonas that he was gay and sabotaged the best relationship Jonas ever had, and they somehow ended up fine. Matteo had spent the entire week fighting off the feeling that someone he had really liked thought he wasn’t worth the time. But somehow, it hadn’t been his worst weekend in the world. Hellish, but not as hellish as it could have been.

Besides, David is quirking is head at him with a smirk that suggests he knows exactly what Matteo is doing, and so Matteo is basically indestructible at the moment.

He shrugs. Amira examines him through her glasses. 

“Okay,” she says, leaning back in her chair to cross her arms. “Deal.”

“Don’t you have to ask Laura and I if we will actually go?” David asks from where he’s standing. 

Amira and Matteo both turn to look at him. He shrugs all innocent-like, and an eyebrow raises smugly to match the rest of his tilted expression, but his eyes are twinkly again. Matteo wants to grab him by his hoodie and kiss him until all his challenges turn soft just like he’d done last week. 

He wants to know what’s going on and but Matteo doesn’t know a subtle way to ask “why have you been ignoring me and why do you look away whenever I look you in the eye but smile like we’re still friends and does this just mean I just wasn’t enough for you?”. He wonders if it’s stupid to think that he misses him even though David is right there in front of him and everything might not have meant anything anyway. One day was all it had taken for something to build up and then crash back down.

“You will,” Matteo says, the words confident while he is not.

Amira and David both seem surprised at his bravado. Amira lets out a laugh. David stares at him. His tongue darts out to lick his lips as he gives Matteo a sweeping evaluative look that Matteo really hopes Amira isn’t paying enough attention too, especially when Matteo can feel himself blushing again.

But just as quickly as it shows, David’s smile fades and he looks away again, shoving on his wrinkled beanie. Matteo doesn’t know what he just remembered but it hurts to watch David make his way towards the door with a muttered, “I’ve got to go.”

Amira and Matteo both stare at the entryway where David disappeared for what feels like forever. And then Amira clears her throat and turns back to the table to search through the textbook. “What have you been having trouble with in class, Matteo?”

 

Later that evening, Matteo finally gets a text back from David that simply says, “I don’t think this is going to work out. I’m sorry.”

Matteo just wishes that David could explain why. His mind is able to come up with thousands of reasons and none of them are good. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured out how to get to where I want to story to go!! I have officially Plotted. You will now notice a chapter count, and while I only know what I am doing for 11 chapters, the 12th is just in case I decide to be dramatic and make David disappear for a month or more reasonably, add an epilogue. In related news, I need to have this finished in a month before I go on vacation but at the rate we are going, we should be fine and everything will be wrapped up nice and clean.
> 
> I may have lied in some comment replies up until this point because I only had a thin idea of where this is going. I don't know. I usually say vague stuff anyway because what's the point of ruining plot, but sorry if I somehow managed to crush your dreams with this chapter. David is Frightened and we must forgive him (and also me). If I'm going to address Matteo's issues, I thought it'd only be fair to address David's. 
> 
> Thank you for all your comments, they mean the world to me.


	8. would that I

“We need to find a girl for Matteo to hook up with,” Abdi says the minute that he and Carlos have shoved their way into the flat with a box of party decorations.

“What?” Matteo asks blankly, at the same time as Jonas scoffs, “Why?”

“He broke up with Sara, what was it… two weeks ago? That’s what you do when you break up with someone,” Carlos says sagely. He makes his way into the living room to set the box down, and turns towards them with the seriousness of someone who believes he is giving out the best advice in the world. “You hook up with someone.”

“And how do you know what to do after breaking up with someone?” Jonas asks, plopping down on the couch.

“I mean-“ Carlos starts but then realizes he has no leg to stand on in this conversation.

“Wait, hear me out,” Abdi jumps into the conversation for him, emphasizing his point with dramatic hand movements towards both Jonas and Matteo. “Jonas here didn’t hook up with anyone because he was sad about the break up. Matteo, are you sad about breaking up with Sara?”

“No,” Matteo admits. He’s still hovering by the entryway to the living room, having followed them there but unsure if he really wants to get involved in this mess. 

“See!” Abdi exclaims. “You’ve got to get back in the field, man!”

Matteo makes eye contact with Jonas who looks both amused and completely exasperated with Carlos and Abdi. He grins when he looks back at Matteo as if saying,  _ these are the people we chose to be friends with. _

Matteo rolls his eyes and finally joins the rest of them by slouching onto the couch. “Abdi, haven’t you been pining after Sam for months?”

“Ooooh,” Carlos says lowly, but Matteo is just as quick to turn on him.

“And you’ve got a girlfriend, dude. What do you know about hooking up?”

“Damn,” Abdi whispers under his breath in awe.

“Nice,” Jonas agrees, and then sticks his hand out for Matteo to fist bump before hopping to his feet and moving towards the box. “Enough of this, boys. We’ve got to set up for a party.”

Carlos grumbles but follows along with the group as they grab a bunch of tape and streamers to stick everywhere. But it’s only a couple minutes in that he asks, “What about Emma?”

“What about her?” Jonas answers. 

“What about Emma for Matteo,” he asks again. “She seems nice.”

“But not too nice, if you know what I mean,” Abdi agrees with a grin, wiggling his eyebrows obscenely.

Matteo chucks a roll of streamers at them and watches as it leaves a billowing trail across the room before hitting Abdi in the chest as he tries dancing away with a laugh.

“Hey!” Jonas calls from where he’s tying up a decoration in the corner of the living room. He’s standing on the side table to reach it, and turns on them menacingly with the tape. “If Matteo doesn’t want to hook up with anyone, he doesn’t have to.”

“I knowww,” Carlos whines. “But there weren’t any sparks with Sara. And I want that for you, man. Like me and Kiki.”

“There’s  _ something  _ between you and Kiki,” Abdi mutters, and Carlos smacks him upside the head.

Matteo can feel Jonas looking at him again like he’s waiting for a cue on how much he should be saying. Matteo has lazily assigned himself to pinning up a couple decorations and spends a little too much time trying to poke one into the wall for it to be anything but avoiding the conversation. But he can’t help but smile, even if it is at the wall. His friends genuinely care, they’re just going about caring in the wrong way.

“There won’t be a spark between me and Emma,” Matteo says, turning around.

“You never know,” Carlos disagrees. “I didn’t know how much I’d like Kiki but now I love her.”

“This isn’t about you and Kiki,” Jonas calls from the table, but he’s too far away from Carlos to hit that time.

“No, I know there won’t be,” Matteo disagrees. “You see-“ he pauses but pushes on as he shoves his hands deep into his pockets so that he doesn’t nervously twitch them “-there’s this boy. Who’s going to be at the party tonight. And I’ve liked him for a while now, but he says it’s not going to work out, so I’m not really feeling up for hooking up with anyone, ja?”

The room goes dead quiet. Carlos and Abdi look at each other, and then at Jonas to make sure he’s getting this, and then at Matteo. 

Then Abdi lets out a low impresses whistle, “He doesn’t even need our help. It’s only been a couple weeks and he’s already made a move on someone.”

Carlos thumps Abdi across the chest with the loud whisper of, “The dude rejected him, have some subtlety.”

They both lack subtlety. Matteo falls against the wall with a groan, letting his head knock back until he’s staring up at the ceiling. If there is a god, Matteo wants to see him now so that he can tell him directly that his friends are idiots.

“I’ll beat whoever it was up,” Abdi suggests to Matteo.

“That sounds homophobic,” Jonas comments idly from where he’s watching on top of the table.

“Nein! I’m defending a brother! If anything, it’s equality, because I’d beat up a girl who broke his heart too.”

“You’d punch a girl?” Carlos asks, appalled.

Abdi freezes, caught in a trap, before offering up a skeptical “yes”. 

“That’s fucked up, dude,” Jonas agrees, but he’s grinning.

“Was it Peter?” Abdi asks, swinging on Matteo again just so he can get out of that line of conversation. “Please tell me it’s Peter. I could probably beat him up, and he seems like he could be gay.”

“He’s the only one you could beat up,” Carlos muses. “Luka from German class could probably be gay and you couldn’t win in a fight against him.”

“Luka is a twig!” Abdi exclaims, causing Carlos to chortle, “Exactly.”

And then he and Abdi are fighting, smacking each other across the chest until they’re a mess of limbs trying to hit someone again.

“Boys!” Jonas chides again, as they disentangle themselves again. “Stop mentioning being gay and beating people up in the same sentence.”

“And neither of you have a gaydar,” Matteo groans in agreement. “You couldn’t even tell that I was gay.”

“Luigi is a straight up savage today,” Abdi says reverently.

“Bro, of course he is, he was just rejected by someone. How do you feel when Sam rejects you!” Carlos says, turning on Abdi again who just looks put out by the reminder.

“Sad.”

“Exactly. So tonight we’ve got to support our brother, ja?” At this, Carlos abandons the minimal set up he’d been working on to cross the room and throw his arm across Matteo’s shoulders. “We are here for you, dude.”

“Yeah!” Abdi says enthusiastically with a howl of support. “That boy isn’t gonna know what hit him. No one turns down our Luigi!”

“It’s going to be the best party ever,” Jonas agrees.

Matteo scoffs but his lips quirk up into a smile anyway. He hadn’t known what he was expecting but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t the boys immediately ganging up on David just because Matteo had mentioned that he said it wouldn’t work out. Not that they knew it was David. But they didn’t care it was a boy.

“Alright,” he agrees, and the rest of the boys start cheering. “Best party ever.”

 

The party is a mess, and Matteo still doesn’t feel any better than he had been at the start of the day. The girls had clambered into the apartment first to meet Mia, and the instant the two groups collided, Matteo was left on his own so that his friends could go flirt. Hans came in with a giant group of people he knew from god knows where with all their bright colors and costumes. Elias and the rest of his squad followed with a bunch of balloons and started introducing themselves, and within minutes of that, people from school who had heard of the party from a friend of a friend were crowded into the flatshare’s kitchen and drinking in the living room while the music was turned full blast. Neon paint was splattered onto each others’ cheeks the minute the sun went down, and there were bodies everywhere.

Matteo could see David near the corner of the living room. It was hard not to notice David. He and Laura had been the center of attention the minute they had made their way into the flat, and it seemed like everyone wanted their turn in his presence. 

Matteo couldn’t blame them. David wasn’t lazy David with sweaters and beanies tonight. He was cool David, with skinny jeans and a white t-shirt that practically glowed in the black light, and he wore his headphones around his neck even though he’d never get the chance to use them. He was artsy aesthetic David, the David who dressed to impress, and who everyone wanted to impress as well.

Matteo slide down against the wall and wished for a smoke. If he didn’t look, he couldn’t see David smiling or Leonie greeting him with a kiss on the cheek like they had known each other forever.

“Yooooo,” Jonas is greeting, sliding down on the floor next to him. “Your man here yet? We are going to impress him so hard tonight.”

Matteo snorts. He wishes he could say that he didn’t want David here but it’d be a lie. And he highly doubts that they’d be able to get his attention. Anyone could get drunk at a party or kiss someone random while the lighting is dark, but David wouldn’t care if Matteo did any of that. He’s got too many adoring fans and all that bullshit to pay attention too.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jonas says. He knows Matteo all too well. He holds out a hand for Matteo to clasp and drags him to his feet. “I’m not letting you wallow, man. Pining is not going to be your whole life. We are going to dance, and drink, and get high in the bathroom again, and not necessarily in that order!”

“I don’t want to,” Matteo grumbles, but he’s already standing.

“Nonsense,” Jonas disagrees, and then he’s pulling Matteo through the crowds of people and pouring him a plastic cup of liquor. “I’m here. So it’s going to be fun no matter what you want.”

Matteo looks down at the cup then back up at Jonas. “Shouldn’t you be with Hanna?”

“I can talk to her anytime,” Jonas dismisses. He holds up his own cup and smiles. “You and me, bro. Best friends forever.”

“Best friends forever,” Matteo agrees, and then bumps his cup against Jonas’ before downing it like a shot. Jonas grins and lets out a loud whoop before downing his too. 

So they dance. Just he and Jonas, and it would have made his stomach flip before, but today they can grin and when Matteo purposefully steps on his toes, Jonas puts him in a headlock and ruffles his hair like it’s nothing. It’s unexpectedly wonderful how nothing had changed since telling him about his old crush. 

Every once in a while, he thinks he can feel David looking at them, but doesn’t want to turn around and be disappointed if it isn’t true.

Abdi joins them dancing after probably having another weird conversation with Sam again, and then Hanna is roped in, and then Carlos and Kiki, and more and more until there’s a giant group of people all connected somehow dancing with each other and grinning in the middle of a party in Matteo’s flat. 

Matteo has to admit it but Jonas was right. It’s hard not to have fun.

“Hey, what’s that?” Mia asks, tugging on Matteo and Hanna’s sleeves to point somewhere in the crowd.

It’s Amira talking with Yousef as they lean against the wall. She had gathered no one to join her at all and is laughing into a glass of water as Yousef animatedly tells some sort of story with a lot of hand gestures that look like zoo animals. Matteo grins. When he looks over at Hanna and Mia, they look to be a little in awe, and he gets it. Amira doesn’t crack her façade very often.

“Who is that?” Hanna asks, turning to Matteo.

“Yousef,” he says smugly, glad to know the answer.

“Come on, let’s go introduce ourselves,” Mia exclaims, grabbing Hanna’s hand to pull her towards their new target.

“Sam, Kiki!” Hanna calls back at the dancing group. “We’re meeting Amira’s new beau!”

“Amira has a beau!” Kiki asks, sounding much more shocked than completely necessary. But she dives in for the gossip and shares a grin with Sam as they approach Amira much too quickly for it to be anything but a military tactic. Matteo hopes that Amira is at least a little prepared, or that her god decides to grant her mercy and has someone pull her from that conversation soon. It should probably be Matteo, because he was the one who made her start sharing this part of her life with her friends. But he’s still a meddling fool and knows he won’t.

Amira’s miracle turns out to be a crash near the window that has everyone turning to look. It sounds valuable. It is Sara, who had bumped into one of Hans’ flower pots that fell off the table, spilling dirt all over the carpet. There have been worse incidents at parties. 

Those who had bothered looking turn away, but Sara looks close to crying. Her ponytail is a mess, her face blotchy with alcohol, and her jeans get dirty as she wobbles down to try to clean it up. Matteo is suddenly racked with guilt. He knows it’s probably his fault. He hadn’t bothered to check up on her, too busy surrounded by his own life and being sad, that he had forgotten everything about her life. Out of anyone, he probably knows most why she’s drinking.

Jonas gives him an,  _ are you sure, _ look as he leaves the group but Matteo ignores it.

“Sara,” he greets hesitantly when he approaches.

“Matteo,” Sara greets miserably. She is staring at the flower pot wreckage, having given up cleaning it the second that she started. “What do you want?”

Matteo glances around the room, not sure how to do this. There is a lot he is unsure how to do. He can see Leonie already pushing her way over to her friend’s side, glaring at Matteo as she goes, but behind her is David. He is looking between Matteo and Sara but bites his lip when their eyes meet. And then he looks down at the ground. It hurts. He’s probably uncomfortable with Matteo seeing him start to hang out with Leonie so much after telling him that he and Matteo wouldn’t work out.

“I need to talk to you,” Matteo says, drawing up his nerves and turning back to Sara in the absence of David watching him.

Leonie stops in front of them with her arms crossed. “She will do no such thing. You broke her heart, you ass, and I’m not letting her take you back with whatever you plan to say to her.”

David visibly starts behind her, and then stares at Matteo. Matteo doesn’t look at him.

“Five minutes,” he begs Sara.

Sara only nods and pulls herself up by the table.

“Five minutes Florenzi,” Leonie threatens. “And if she’s crying again, I’m murdering you.”

Matteo doesn’t really plan on that happening. He only wants to apologize. 

There’s a weight to David’s stare and Matteo doesn’t want to see what it means. While what he had felt watching him all evening before seemed a bit lost, this one seems heavier. But by the time Matteo dares to glance over, David has looked away entirely. The smiles that Matteo had caught glimpses of from the dance floor have disappeared. 

He loops his arm around Sara to help her wobble through the nearby door to his room, luckily empty of couples looking for a hookup, and lets her sit on the bed. The door remains open just a crack as they sit there, the noise and music of the party slipping through, but it closes out Leonie and David. Matteo can still feel the heat of David’s gaze on him. He wonders what he is thinking, or why he had followed Leonie to join them, and then silently swears. Fuck David and his mysterious aura, and not telling Matteo why they wouldn’t work out, and letting Matteo kiss him before so that now every time Matteo looks at him it’s the only thing he remembers. It makes it worse.

He groans and falls back onto the bed next to Sara. She’s is at the point of drunkenness where Matteo can smell it in her sweat but other than her stumbling, her eyes look completely sober as she stares into his. 

“We’ve never been alone in here,” she comments. “You always leave the door open.”

The door is still technically open, but Matteo wasted all his energy trying to fight his way in here with her so that he can goddamn apologize like a nice person who felt bad for her breaking the flowerpot and the rest of her life going to hell, so he doesn’t contradict her.

“I used to think you were a gentleman for that, you know,” Sara continues, slurring slightly. She pokes at his chest. “But then you didn’t want to have sex with me at all which was rude. And not answering my texts! Also rude! You are a very, very rude man. Breaking up with me was  _ so _ rude!”

“How’s your family?” Matteo asks instead.

Sara falls back beside him so that they are both looking up at the ceiling. “Shit.”

Matteo snorts.

“Are you going to ask for me back?” Sara asks.

“No,” Matteo says simply.

“Oh.” Sara takes a long time to process that, wiggling on his bed like she’s trying to get comfortable or like the right position will help her think, and then she decides, “Good. You’re rude.”

“Sorry,” Matteo says, and he genuinely means it this time.

Sara seems to get that because she flops around until she’s on her stomach and reaches up to play with his hair. It’s probably a mess, but it’s nicer than it could have been. Matteo hadn’t really bothered to do it all week but had finally managed to shove a comb through it before the party. He’d actually made an effort, in case David had seen him and tried talking to him, but it hadn’t been the case all night. Busy, busy, busy. That was David. Busy with everyone but Matteo.

“You’re cute,” Sara muses, and while Matteo doesn’t really have anything to say to that, she continues anyway with a sudden small giggle. “Can I tell you a secret? I think Leonie is cute too. But she likes David. Super cool, famous David.”

Matteo is much too exhausted and much to sober for this, but he blinks up at Sara anyway, and then says, “I like David too.”

“Fuck,” Sara says, and then laughs and laughs and laughs.

Leonie bursts into the room only a minute later like she expects them to be making out but instead ends up staring instead. Matteo is just glad that Sara isn’t crying. He prefers being alive as much as sometimes he wonders if he doesn’t. 

David is nowhere to be seen.

 

Matteo takes a long time to exit his room. He can’t really bring himself to move. The party dies down as he listens, and before leaving, Jonas calls through the door asking if he is okay. Matteo provides no answer but Jonas seems to get it. He tells him to text in the morning.

It’s only when the flat has become completely quiet that Matteo can feel energy returning to him. Enough for him to stumble into the kitchen for a late night hangover snack and pause when he sees David leaning against the counter scrolling through his phone. It feels like a flashback, and it feels weird remembering that it had been months ago that this first happened, except this truly is his own kitchen. There is confetti everywhere and it’s almost one in the morning and this time it might actually be a dream.

David looks up slowly and pockets his phone. 

“Na?” He says into the quiet.

“Na,” Matteo says feverishly.

David’s eyes flick over him before saying quietly, “You look good today.”

Matteo highly doubts it. Maybe at the beginning of the night but in between drinking, dancing with Jonas and the rest of the squad, and talking with Sara, he is bound to look messy and tired. But he doesn’t really care. Thinking back, he is also a little proud. He had fun tonight, despite everything.

“You and Sara? You, uh…” David continues, fading off into silence again.

Matteo’s lips are chapped after not speaking for so long and he licks them carefully so that he can speak. His voice is rough, but he finishes for him, “broke up.”

He can see the questions in David’s eyes. How long ago had it happened? Before or after they kissed? Was it for David? Had he been planning on getting back with Sara tonight? Matteo can’t bring himself to answer them, but he huffs and looks at the ceiling, and decides that David is someone he wants to tell, even if David still thinks they won’t work out in the end.

“I came out to my friends,” he admits.

“Yeah?” David asks, and Matteo can see the beginnings of a smile when he looks back down at him. A real, genuine smile. The kind that means something. “I’m proud of you.”

Matteo takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He wonders why he still feels small, standing in his own kitchen in a baggy sweater and feeling like he could drown in it, and he forces out the ragged question, “Why are you here?”

“You told me I’d come,” David says but they both know Matteo isn’t talking about the party.

“No,” Matteo says, opening his eyes to stare at him. “Here. Now.”

“I, erm…” David starts, and then gets stuck, looking away and studying the sink beside him. But then he takes a careful step towards him. And then another. By the time he tilts his head back up again, his nose brushes Matteo’s. Matteo suddenly can’t breath. David’s eyes are so close and desperately wide. He can feel David’s breath shaky against his lips.

David’s gaze flickers down for the briefest second and Matteo remembers kissing him over and over again. He remembers his hope rising and falling again and again as he over thought things like usual. Matteo desperately wants to close the few inches between them, but he closes his eyes and steels himself. It’s not his move to make. And whether David kisses him or turns away, Matteo doesn’t want to see.

“I can’t-” David’s voice is ragged.

David doesn’t finish his sentence. His hand reaches towards the side of Matteo’s neck and buries itself in his hair. The other finds its way toward his waist. Matteo’s breathing becomes more shallow with every second because he knows what’s going to happen and he  _ wants.  _ He wants so bad.

When David finally kisses him, it is soft and careful. It makes every bone in Matteo’s body melt and his hands fly up to cup David’s cheeks and let himself be drawn closer. Matteo doesn’t know why he hasn’t done soft kisses before. Not with Sara, and not before, in his desperate need to kiss David before. 

It feels like coming home to somewhere he hadn’t even known existed.

When David finally pulls away, Matteo opens his eyes to see David’s brown ones looking back at him. They are still impossibly close. Their foreheads are held together as their noses brush again, and then David pulls even further away with a grin and a small delighted laugh. Matteo can’t exactly stop his smile either.

They look at each other for the longest while like it’s the last time they’ll ever see each other, but when David’s smile starts slipping again, Matteo isn’t letting go so easily. He reaches out and takes David’s hand. Their fingers twine together easily.

David stares at it for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then suggests tentatively, “Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Matteo agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my longest chapter yet and I blame not wanting to cut down any of the beginning boy squad interaction. I love them too much. I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that sometimes this is honestly just s3 reordered and rewritten however I want. Only difference is that David is moderately famous and I’ve added a bit of s4. And apparently, I'm making everyone I can as gay as possible. So now I’m shoving in references to whatever clips I want. This is a completely self motivated fic tbh.  
> Druck s3 is doneeeeee!! My boys are together and happy!!! I love them!! And Hanna and Jonas? Need to get back together pronto and that is law.  
> Idk if this chapter is a mess but a lot of things happened and the characters most certainly are a mess, as per usual, so thanks for reading anyway lol. Hope you enjoyed it! <3


	9. like real people do

Morning creeps in slowly in bits and pieces. Matteo feels the rising sun drifting through the windows and resting on his cheeks, soft and warm, and the air on his toes where they had slide out from under his sheets overnight. Something shifts on the other side of the bed and bare feet pad quietly across the floor. Fabric brushes. The door to his room creaks open then closed. There are more steps, another door, and then nothing.

None of these things piece together until Matteo turns the other way, seeking a presence he had known was there, and gets cooling blankets instead. He sleepily takes hold of the other pillow and draws it to his chest to cuddle instead.

That’s when he remembers. David was here.

It’s the earliest he’s been awake on a Saturday morning but he blinks away his drowsiness anyway and sits up. There’s no sign David had stayed the night at all except the indent on Matteo’s bed and the smell of hair gel on the pillow that he is clutching.

“Shit,” Matteo swears under his breath, sliding down onto his mattress again. He closes his eyes and hopes it was a dream that David had even been here at all. Or that he’ll hear a noise in the kitchen and he’ll walk out and find David getting something from the kitchen or using the bathroom. He wouldn’t have been so cruel as to leave without giving answers as to why again, would he?

When he opens his eyes, David is still gone. The flat is quiet.

He hugs the pillow closer and remembers the other night. Matteo had taken David’s hand and led him to his bedroom. They hadn’t kissed, except a few reassuring ones here and there, but had simply laid down on the bed and watched each other. Matteo had softly combed aside the front of David’s hair and David had looked so vulnerable that he had found the courage to ask, “Stay?”

“Of course,” David had whispered. He placed a kiss to Matteo’s forehead like there hadn't ever been any other answer. And then Matteo had fallen asleep.

Something hits Matteo’s window. It’s a small tap and quiet enough that Matteo barely hears it until there’s another. The next tap comes sharper but louder. He rolls over just in time to see another small pebble hit the window to his balcony and watches to see if it'll happen again just in case he saw it wrong the first time. Sure enough, another rock comes flying up to hit the glass with a tap. It’s a good aim.

A baffled Matteo drags himself to his feet and shuffles outside to look down. 

It’s David, in that stupid sunglasses and hoodie disguise, holding up a paper cup towards him in explanation as he holds another one and a pastry bag from the cafe in his other hand. Matteo is still a bit in shock from expecting the worst but when David grins, there’s nothing left to feel about it except relief and a drowsy amusement.

“Let me in?” David calls from the sidewalk. “I didn’t want to wake up your flatmates.”

“What’s the password?” Matteo asks.

David thinks about it for a second, clears his throat, pressing the bag of pastries and extra coffee dramatically to his heart, gesturing up towards Matteo with the other, and begins, “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Matteo is the sun!”

Matteo is pretty sure David is the sun, but the second David had started spouting Shakespeare in the street, Matteo had began to turn a dangerous bright red, and he needs to get David to stop immediately. He chucks one of the pebbles down at him but David dodges easily with a laugh.

“No,” Matteo calls back down, trying to get his blush under control. 

“Then what is it?” David asks. He’s smiling smugly like he knows how flustered Matteo is.

Matteo desperately tries to think of something clever but immediately comes up with something completely ridiculous instead. “One two three four.”

“Ah,” David says knowingly. “One two three four. Can you let me in now?”

There’s nothing else Matteo can do but leave his balcony and buzz open the building door for David. He doesn’t even wait for him to come up the stairs but instead holds his own door open in anticipation. David comes around the corner easily, stepping up onto their flat’s floor, and stops in the stairwell to smile at Matteo.

“Hi,” he says softly.

“Hi,” Matteo breathes back.

It’s quiet as David slides past him and into the flat, his shoulder brushing against Matteo’s longer than it probably should have taken, and their fingers brush as David hands him one of the paper cups. Matteo probably should have told him at some point that he doesn’t drink coffee because it makes him anxious and full of nerves that he can’t get rid of when spending so much time laying around but it’s too late now. It had been a sweet thought. He takes a sip anyway.

He must have made a weird face because David grimaces and says, “Sorry. I should have warned you. You do like tea, right?”

Matteo can only nod and take another sip. It isn’t coffee after all. Instead, it is sweet and it tastes like honey and it’s exactly what Matteo needs in the morning and he doesn’t know how David could have known.

“It calms the nerves,” David explains.

They’re standing in the middle of the hallway. If Matteo looks close enough, he can see David’s free hand shaking slightly as he takes off his sunglasses and shoves them in his hoodie pocket. He is biting the inside of his lip. It is not Matteo who is nervous.

“Come on,” Matteo says finally, nodding towards his room. “Before Hans finds you and  attacks you like a crazy fan again .”

“I like Hans,” David comments, but follows Matteo anyway. 

“Hans thinks you’re part of the best band to ever grace the city,” Matteo snorts.

“You don’t?” David asks, and he’s smirking again which means that Matteo short circuits and doesn’t answer. He has to force himself away from staring to push open his bedroom door and close it softly behind them. The flat is still quiet enough that he thinks Mia or Hans weren’t woken up by their banter.

They set up a little picnic on Matteo’s bed, shoving aside his quilt and his sheets to the floor, and place a donut each on napkins like plates. Matteo taps his cup against David’s with his pinkie finger raised and pretentiously smacks his lips together for a taste before declaring, “Lovely.”

David does that adorable head tilt thing with a smile and sticks his own pinkie out, agreeing, “Delicious.”

It’s only when they’ve finished eating that Matteo notices the small notes on his napkin, hidden in a corner and hastily scribbled. David notices it at the same time, and Matteo can tell it’s a race the moment David’s hand shoots out to grab it first like he could pretend Matteo hadn’t seen it at all.

It’s too late. Matteo is already holding it, and pulls it closer with a gleeful, “What’s this?”

“It’s private,” David argues.

“You wrote it on a napkin,”  Matteo disagrees, sticking his hand out to keep David from reaching over and grabbing the napkin while he turns it to read its jagged edges. He really hopes it’s not a phone number. He grins wider when he finds it’s not. The handwriting is crumpled and messy, like David had quickly scribbled it with one hand before grabbing their coffee cups of tea, but Matteo can make out a few words.

When he looks up at David, Matteo is blushing, and David looks a bit embarrassed too with his olive cheeks full of color. He is running his hands through his hair that had slowly fallen out from the small amount of gel he had the previous night. “It’s part of a song I’m writing.”

“You write a lot of songs,” Matteo says, a bit stupidly, and lets David take the napkin from his hands and tuck it carefully into his hoodie pocket.

“Ja, well,” David shrugs, looking down to fiddle with his fingers. “It’s my job.”

The words slip out before Matteo can stop them, “You should play it for me.”

“I don’t have my guitar,” David says.

All it takes is Matteo looking at him expectantly before he sighs and leans back on the bed against the pillows, holding out his arms for Matteo. It feels so easy to fall into them and be wrapped away as his head leans against David’s chest. Matteo is not used to warmth, or company, or things that are easy, and it terrifies him to death. But he seems to fit in David’s arms like the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle and it’s the most comfortable he’s ever been. He doesn't want to let go.

David hums in his ear, his hand reaching up to brush circles in the mess that is Matteo’s hair, and Matteo feels dizzy with the contact. His whole body tingles and he sinks closer to him.

The words written on the napkin come softly like a lullaby, asking for a kiss with no real demands.

So Matteo turns his head up toward David and kisses him. Immediately, David's voice is silenced as he sinks further into the bed, pliant to Matteo’s small touches. His hand drags from Matteo’s hair along the skin of his jaw but they can’t really kiss properly because David is smiling and won’t stop. Neither will Matteo. Eventually, kissing turns long and sweet, and with every touch Matteo can feel his limbs softening into putty against David’s.

David is the one to pull away first, ducking to the side, and there’s nothing Matteo can do except rest his head down on David’s shoulder. They both don’t pull away further. Instead, they lay on Matteo’s bed together in a comfortable silence as they hold onto each other. David presses his lips to Matteo’s hair and that’s it. That’s all they need.

Matteo looks up at David again, at his messy dark hair and flushed skin and soft brown eyes, and at everything Matteo isn’t, and then asks, “Why me?”

“Matteo…” David says softly. He hugs Matteo tighter and instead of looking confused or upset by the question, he just looks sad. “You’re perfect.”

But Matteo doesn’t agree. He’s not a David. He isn’t confident or cool and he doesn’t have any special talents. He isn’t really going anywhere with his life except to his weed dealer’s every month while David has probably traveled all over and seen thousands of people every day. Everywhere he goes, there is someone who knows him, admires him, loves him, and Matteo is just Matteo. He is sad, and a bit lonely, and he’s still less than halfway to finding himself.

But David is staring at him like he’s beautiful anyway and Matteo doesn’t really know how to voice all that.

“You said we wouldn’t work out,” Matteo says instead. He sounds remarkably small.

David sighs and pulls away, forcing Matteo to sit up and look across at him, but he doesn’t retreat more than that. Their knees press together against the mattress and David takes Matteo’s hands and links them together. He watches their hands for a moment, collapsing his fingers over Matteo’s and rubbing his thumb back and forth, before finally looking up at him.

“I saw you,” David admits. “At that concert a few months ago. And I remember thinking that you were one of the prettiest boys I had ever seen. I don’t usually see people like that again. But then you were friends with Amira, and I felt so happy when I was with you, and then Laura told me you had a girlfriend. Which was-” he’s blushing a little as he scoffs at himself, looking down at he and Matteo’s hand again, before continuing with a small laugh. “-Laura thought I was being hopeless, but I hoped you were bi and maybe you’d break up or something. I don’t know. But then you told me you were gay, and you looked so… despondent. I forgot about that, when you kissed me, and I didn’t know if…”

Matteo’s brain immediately flashes to every memory he has of his parents fighting when he was little. His mother, exhausted and immobile, and his father refusing to do chores. Of Matteo feeling like he had to fix them or that maybe if he did the dishes, his father wouldn’t get after his mother and then his mother wouldn’t cry and she'd be able to get up and clean after all. It had been a relief when his father had finally left them but it left a giant chasm where he’d been. More had been up to Matteo, trying to be the perfect son and hiding away in his room smoking weed to forget everything, and eventually, he had to leave too in order to even have a chance at being himself. His mother had been despondent.

“Oh.” When he exhales, it is shaky, and his voice is soft.

“ _ No _ ,” David says immediately, gripping Matteo’s hands tighter the second he seems to realize where Matteo’s thoughts could have left him. He even repeats it for emphasis. “No. Not because of that. I just- being with me is hard. And you weren’t out, and I didn’t even know you had broken up with Sara until I thought you were going to try to get her back again, and I don’t want to put that on you.”

“I told my friends,” Matteo says, just like he had last night.

“And that’s amazing,” David agrees again, smiling, but it drops just as fast. “But one day, and it doesn’t have to be today or anytime soon, a lot more people than that would know.”

Matteo thinks of all of David’s twitter followers, and all the creepy stalker pictures he had found online, and knows what he means. David may not be as big of a celebrity as lots of people but he’s still got a following and they check up on him. They dig into his personal life. They want to know more. Even Leonie had been talking about interviews where David was asked if he was single and with new music coming out soon, there'd be more questions, more attention, and one day that question would have to be answered.

He’s used to his room where he can always run and hide. It feels like a safe haven here with David.

“Can we,” Matteo starts hesitantly, unsure of how far David is willing to go. Or how long he is willing to wait. All Matteo knows is that he really likes David, and he doesn’t want him to leave like Matteo's father had left. “Can it just be us? For now?”

“Yeah,” David says, smiling in relief. “It can.”

Matteo tackles him in a hug that leaves both of them laughing and David falling onto his back with Matteo on top of him again. David playfully kicks Matteo away, their arms wrestling, and he manages to get a good solid hand on David’s face before he suddenly finds himself on his back with a giggle.

“Yield,” David challenges, pinning Matteo down.

“Nein!”

“Yes!”

“Nein!”

David covers Matteo’s mouth as they both laugh, but Matteo only licks it, causing him to jerk away with a disgusted, but luckily equally amused, “Matteo!”

Matteo takes his chance and yanks David down by the front of his hoodie until they’re kissing again. David doesn’t seem to argue after that. He only lets Matteo sink into the mattress as he follows him down with his hands by Matteo’s head. 

It’s only when Matteo is sliding his hand to the bare skin of David’s back underneath the hoodie that David makes the fateful, and possibly ill-timed, joke in between kisses, “You’re not just trying to sleep with me because I’m famous or trans, right?”

“What?” Matteo asks in surprise, reeling back as far as one can when they’re being pressed to a mattress which is approximately about an inch.

It’s only then he remembers the wikipedia page he had looked up and that he probably should have known that David was trans for longer or at least done more than skim the page, but more importantly, he’s horrified that it’s even a question that David would have to ask, joking or otherwise. Do lots of people try to sleep with David because he’s famous? Or because he’s trans? Is sleeping with people just because they are trans a thing?

“You didn’t know?” David reels back just as quickly to sit on his heels with a horrified expression.

Fuck.

“No, I-” Matteo stammers, shooting back up.

David is still staring at him. “Hans and I had a whole conversation about it when you let me stay for dinner.”

Fuck. That did happen too. The conversation is derailing much too fast for Matteo to get a handle on it.

“You were being vague! I thought you were talking about the trans community in general!” Matteo says, before realizing that he is not fixing anything, but now he has to tell David that he really did just happen to briefly, for a couple months since reading the information, forget. He resigns himself to his fate and lets himself collapse in misery.

“I googled you,” he mumbles. “Then I forgot.”

“You forgot,” David repeats.

Matteo nods, unable to look David in the eye. David asks carefully anyway, “But you’re okay with it?”

These are the types of conversations that Matteo can’t plan for and they paralyze him. There’s nowhere to escape for his own time to think of a reasonable way to say everything that he probably should, or wants to, especially when David is still sitting on his legs from where he’d been leaning over him. He doesn’t know anything about trans issues. He hadn’t even known it was something to consider. At least David is not running, but Matteo’s deathly afraid he’ll say something wrong and he will be gone faster than Matteo can even try to fix it.

But then after too long of not saying anything, David moves to stand up, and Matteo is hit with the realization that not saying anything might be worse.

He scrambles up and one of his hands shoots out to grab David’s wrist with a desperate, “wait!” Then Matteo prays he won’t come off as the biggest ignorant asshole in the world and continues, “I don’t care that you’re trans! Or, I do, because it’s important to you, but it’s not- You're still David. And I'm really gay and had a giant crush on you, so. It doesn't matter to me. I just... Like you. A lot.”

Matteo feels like he might have messed up and everything feels tight with panic, and he can see that tension reflected in David, but the second it relaxes, Matteo finds himself able to breath again. David looks like he's finally breathing too, having stopped the minute Matteo pulled away. He sits back down and while not everything feels resolved, David offers a tentative smile anyway, “Okay.”

“I don’t really know anything about it,” Matteo admits out loud.

“That’s okay,” David admits back at him. “You can ask me. I just… like you too. A lot.”

Just like that, the tension is gone. Matteo, despite feeling completely stupid, blushes, which causes David to smile and poke at his cheeks teasingly. “What? No one has told you they’ve liked you before?”

“No,” Matteo admits, and it sounds much more sad than he meant it to.

“I like you,” David repeats, sliding his hand into the one holding his wrist and he brings their combined hands up to kiss Matteo’s knuckles before repeating it again. “I like you so much, Matteo.”

Matteo feels hot all over. He’s pretty sure he’s covered in red. Pale Italian skin does nothing to hide that he’s never been as flustered before as he is now in his entire life. His whole head feels abuzz with thoughts that can’t pull themselves together to formulate words.

But he can still move and he’s just about to kiss David again when Mia bursts into his room. “Matte-oh!” 

Just as quickly, the door closes again. Matteo collapses his head onto David’s shoulder again while David giggles. They can hear Mia on the other side of the door. “Sorry! Linn made pancakes!”

“I hate them,” Matteo mutters.

“Just us, and Mia?” David asks, repeating his earlier promise, still laughing into Matteo’s hair.

“And the rest of the girls. And my friends,” Matteo corrects, and at David’s curious look, Matteo realizes that he has no clue as to how the dynamics of the boy and girl crews really work. When one person knows something, then everyone will know that something. Mia has more tact than most of them combined and so probably won’t spread it, but at least the flat will know. Matteo gives it about a day before he finds out if more texts will start coming in, but luckily that means a whole day with David.

“Want breakfast?” he asks, forcing himself to draw away.

“No,” David pouts, staring at him pitifully with those wide brown eyes. Matteo isn’t sure how anyone could ever disagree with him when he looks so happy. 

Maybe he’s whipped, or maybe Matteo is just really happy too, but he doesn’t put up an argument against that. It’s all the convincing he needs. 

“Okay,” Matteo whispers. “We’ll stay here.”

 

"So. You googled me?"

"Shut up."

"No, it's okay. I googled you too."

"What'd you find?"

"The best memes in the world."

 

"Wouldn't that hurt?"

"A binder? Nah, it's just a bit restrictive. But I can't wear it overnight."

"Oh. What'd you do last night?"

"I took it off. And then put it back on in the morning."

"What if I had woken up?"

"Then I guess we'd be having this conversation earlier."

 

"Where would you go if the world was ending?"

"Detroit."

"But that's my answer."

"Ja, because I'd be coming with you... Is that okay?"

"That’s very okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Posting an entire chapter that is literally just one scene of David and Matteo communicating and being in love? It's no Hamlet, but let's make Shakespeare and kissing people's hands gay again.


	10. take me to church pt. II

When Matteo and David emerge from the bubble that is his room, Matteo only has a couple messages from Jonas that are mostly checking in on him. Mia had not told the girls. In fact, she greets them in the kitchen for dinner with a knowing smile but doesn’t say anything at all. Matteo isn’t stupid, she probably at least told Hanna, but Hanna has been keeping secrets for Matteo for a while. Not that the breakup thing is a secret anymore but she always had his back anyway.

Hans is, surprisingly, subtle as well. He grins super wide and winks at Matteo when David’s back is turned but that’s all he gets. Matteo is sure that Hans will pull him aside later and grill him for details but for now it is good.

Linn doesn’t even look like she cares. She smiles softly at him, and then goes back to making pasta. While Hans grills David on their Vampire City’s new music that’ll be coming out, Matteo has to swoop in and help Linn because there’s something in him that can’t let someone cook pasta without him.

When David brushes past Matteo to get some plates, his hand runs along his back and holds there. Their fingers touch and Matteo tries to get him to help stir in the last of the pasta sauce. David’s knee presses against his under the table. Little touches everywhere. Matteo doesn’t think they are trying to hide anything and doesn’t want to either.

Mia, Linn, and Hans all pretend like this isn’t the most Matteo has smiled in a very long time, and he appreciates them doing their best to hide their bafflement and delight. Matteo decides that it’s not just his room that is the safe place, it is the entire flat, and it is also with his friends.

David and Matteo get stuck on cleaning up the dishes, and while Matteo normally would have groaned and complained, there’s nothing to complain about spending more time with David.

They pass dishes back and forth quietly. Matteo sponges down each dish and gives it to David to rinse off. He flicks a bit of water at him and David rolls his eyes and hits him with the towel.

Matteo doesn’t know if it’s weird that he never pictured this kind of domesticity. With anyone, but especially not with David, who had once seemed large and above small things like dishes. Daydreams always landed on big romantic gestures, and kissing a boy at a party, and going on dates. He and David had seemed to skip all that, but Matteo thinks this is better. More calm. Stable. Inevitable.

He’s not sure how dates will work when David is always outside in that hoodie and sunglasses getup but they’ll make them work. If not, Matteo has no problem hiding away in his room again, ordering pizza, and watching their favorite movies.

Matteo’s phone goes off on the counter, but when David looks at him expectantly, Matteo holds up his soapy hands. “Is it Jonas again?”

David shrugs and picks up Matteo’s phone for him, tapping it a couple times to check the glowing screen for the message, and his face grows concerned. “It’s your mom.”

Matteo automatically knows what she has sent and what David could have seen. He acts fast, taking the phone from David and immediately sets it face down on the counter now covered in soap. He can see David process this and the moment it dawns on him that Matteo might be living in a flatshare for a reason.

“Sorry,” Matteo blurts out.

David looks taken aback. “For what?”

Matteo really doesn’t know. It had been a reflex reaction, still stuck from the part of him that was afraid that once people knew more about him and his life they’d run away. He doesn't know if that part of him will ever go away. A lot of people know about his mom, hell, all his friends had helped him move out, but they don’t know about the bible quotes and the invitations home or the guilt they can bring. Matteo really doesn’t want baggage to frighten David away.

He shrugs, because it’s better than explaining.

David asks questions anyway, carefully, like he’s scared Matteo might be the one to run. “How should I be feeling about this?”

They both know this isn’t really about just a text from Matteo’s mother. They know the effect that Christianity can have on queer youth. There’s a pressure to conform, or worse, there can be rhetoric that being who you are is a sin. David had a whole sign about it at his homelessness benefit, because sometimes strict traditional beliefs left innocent kids on their own. A bible quote had never just been a bible quote to Matteo. 

Matteo shrugs again. David purses his lips together before offering, “She seems like she loves you very much.”

At least there’s that. It’s the only thing Matteo had been able to rely on for a very long time. Sometimes his mother wouldn’t be able to get out of bed, or forgot to pick him up from school, or didn’t pick up groceries so Matteo had to cook up something from scratch, but he always knew she cared. She’d buy him extra ice cream the next time she went out, or let him crawl into bed with her, and she’d always be sure to leave him a little note by the door on days when she was at her lowest to let him know she loved him. Even now, her messages were sent with good intention. Matteo wouldn’t feel as bad as he did about leaving her if she wasn’t a kind woman.

The question wasn’t about loving Matteo.

“Yeah,” Matteo says. “I know.”

“You should tell her,” David says, and Matteo looks up in surprise. David only offers a small smile. “She says she wants to see you. You might be surprised. And if not, you have a great support system.”

David nods back to the living room where they can see Linn and Hans playing a game of chess while Mia texts on her phone. And it isn’t just them. Matteo has Jonas. He has Abdi and Carlos too. Hell, he even has Amira, and if it came down to it, he has Hanna and the rest of the girls.

“Did your mom accept you?” Matteo asks.

David frowns like he didn’t expect Matteo to ask that at all. His brown eyes look impossibly sad. Just from that alone, Matteo doesn’t need David to tell him but he answers anyway. “No. But I- I didn’t have what you have. Just Laura. It was hard, for a while, but I turned out okay.”

Matteo can’t help but snort. “How much does she regret that now? I bet she sees your face everywhere.”

“I don’t know,” David admits. “I don’t talk to her.”

Matteo looks at his phone again. Despite the advice, David’s story also inspires little confidence. As in, no confidence whatsoever.

“Matteo,” David repeats softly. “Your mom loves you. Your friends love you. And I- you have me. Religion doesn’t mean hate. My mom wasn’t religious. Amira and her family are, but they accepted me easily. Either way, you can’t ignore your mom forever.”

Matteo can. He’s been doing well so far. He’s only talked to her a couple times since moving into the flatshare but he misses her. He is also afraid. He couldn’t even come out to his friends a month ago, still trying to fit in and keep everything the same, and when he told the truth nothing changed at all except he thinks he’s a little bit stronger. His fear is smaller, knowing how easily acceptance can come, and he still misses her.

In the end, it outweighs the fear. Matteo dries his hands, picks up his phone, and types out a, “Mama. Can we have dinner this week? I met a boy, and I’d like you to meet him.”

And then he sets his phone face down again on the counter. He doesn’t bother watching for the little check marks to turn blue or count the seconds it might take her to reply. Matteo hates waiting, and resists the urge to check it right away.

David seems to get that because he reaches out and grabs both of his hands in between his own as he steps forward and kisses Matteo’s forehead. “I’m proud of you.”

Matteo only hums and lets himself relax, if only slightly. “Good. Because, I dragged you into it.”

David laughs against Matteo’s hair. “What’d you say?”

“Just that I met a boy,” Matteo says, as casually as he can. “And that I’d like her to meet him.”

“Did you tell her how perfect I am?” David teases, stepping back a couple inches to grin at him, clearly waiting for Matteo to laugh too as he cheers him up but Matteo can only stare.

“No. I didn’t tell her that part.”

David’s cheeks turn bright pink and Matteo watches with fascination as it spreads. He remains the most beautiful person Matteo has ever seen, whether on stage, or at a party, or alone in Matteo’s kitchen as they share secret parts of themselves with each other.

Matteo’s phone buzzes before David can say anything to that and they both turn to stare at it. Matteo reaches over and taps on the message to read it.

It reads simply: “Of course, darling! If you love him, than so will I. <3”

Matteo flushes. That one word bounces around in his head over and over. Love. David moves by his side to look over his shoulder at it, and then they’re both blushing.

David recovers first with a, “I told you it’d be alright.”

“You didn’t know that,” Matteo disagrees.

“Sure I did,” David says smugly. “How could anyone not love you?”

There’s that word again. Matteo feels like he’s going to burst. He’s fluttery in ways that he didn’t really expect, and nervous, and terrified, and completely and utterly happy. And when he looks over at David he thinks, oh. That's what that feels like.

He wishes that David’s mother had accepted him too. Matteo doesn’t know how anyone could see him as anything less than perfect. It’d be the worst mistake of anyone’s life to let David go. He doesn’t plan on making that mistake.

Matteo is starting to put things together. How David can be so lonely and so popular at one time. Matteo had admired Laura because she was willing to put her whole self on stage and sing for thousands. They were David’s words, but she was the one with the attention and who refused to be anything but herself despite it. She shared who she was. David still hid things, and he had things that had hurt him. He didn’t sing his words himself. There was a reason his personal life section on his wikipedia page was almost empty and that his twitter was equally impersonal.

David and Matteo are both private people, with private lives, and fears of losing those around them.

Matteo ropes his arms around David’s waist and buries his head in the crook of his neck. David chuckles softly but wraps his arms around Matteo’s neck as they hug. _That_ word is on the top of his tongue, but he bites it back. It’s too soon to love someone, but he thinks he might anyway.

 

Tuesday after school, Matteo agrees to meet his mother after her choir practice. David meets him outside of that flatshare in his hoodie and they walk over halfway to the church in silence. Whereas his brain would have normally been spiraling by now, today it is calm. He finds it impossible to think of anything might go wrong. He loves his mother, she loves him, and he has David by his side.

David grabs his hand anyway and their arms brush as they walk. No one pays attention to the two boys in the crowded afternoon streets of Berlin. Matteo can see the steeple up ahead through the buildings, and he can remember how many times he had walked here before, to meet his mother for Easter or on Sundays when she insisted that it would help them both.

“Is there anything I should know about her?” David finally asks as they get closer.

Matteo thinks about this for a minute, knowing a lot he could say, but choosing it well. “She’s um… she’s not easy sometimes, but she tells me she’s been taking antidepressants and I think she’s doing better. She’s-” he smiles slightly. “Really kind. You’ll love her.”

David smiles and pokes at Matteo’s cheeks which causes Matteo’s smile to grow as he laughs and shoves David away. “I think it’s sweet,” David says. “How much you love your mother.”

“Yeah,” Matteo agrees, kicking at a rock on the ground along the sidewalk. Sometimes he thinks he hasn’t been the greatest son despite loving her so much. He did leave her after all. Just like his father. She’s been on her own, with her depression, and Matteo could have helped her through it.

“Hey,” David says, bumping against Matteo’s shoulder. “You did what was best for you.”

Matteo thinks David would probably know about leaving too. Leaving can never be easy but sometimes it’s in an environment where nothing can grow at all, despite how much someone loves. Or whether or not they can’t. He wonders if David chose to leave his mother, and if he still misses her too, but he thinks those are questions he’ll ask another day.

“Yeah,” he says again, still kicking the rock as it skitters ahead of them for him to kick again.

“So,” David says carefully. “Antidepressants. Do you think that maybe that runs in the family?”

Matteo has thought it more times than he can count. Mostly about how he doesn’t want to be his mother and how he is afraid that he is. He nods, and David pauses them outside the church to consider him. He’s always so hesitant, like Matteo might break, and Matteo hates it but then thinks the caution might be warranted.

“Have you seen someone about it?”

Matteo shakes his head. “I don’t want to,” he starts, adjusting his fingers in David’s as he looks down, and then retraces to the core of whatever he might explain. “I just want to be normal.”

“Seeing someone doesn’t mean you’re not,” David says lightly. “I see a therapist every month. There are a bunch of hoops I have to jump through to get hormones or top surgery one day, but it also helps. To have someone to talk to who knows about what you’re going through, or to talk about my family, or all the pressure I have. It doesn’t mean I’m not normal. It just means I need a little extra help to be who I am.”

“And I need a little extra help?” Matteo asks.

David only shrugs. “I don’t know. Only you can answer that.”

Matteo looks over at the church doors, where his mom is practicing with her choir and where he had spent a lot of time killing himself inside wondering if it’d ever accept him, and figures he’s got a lot to think about. But right now, he’s just thinking about his hand in David’s and his mama’s smile. Maybe he’ll think about therapy when he starts crashing again, but he feels a little high on being happy.

“Do you think she’ll recognize me?” David teases, changing the conversation when Matteo stays quiet.

“Do you sing gospel music?” Matteo shoots back.

“ _Take me to church_ ,” David sings under his breath, grinning in that wholehearted way that shows his gums, and Matteo huffs at his ridiculousness and grabs him by the neck for a kiss just to shut him up. David laughs against his lips and whispers, “someone might see us,” but Matteo doesn’t really care.

“I was wondering what Matteo meant when he said he met a boy,” someone comments, and when Matteo’s head snaps up, he sees Mama Florenzi smiling at them. She doesn’t seem to care that she interrupted them kissing, in front of a chapel no less, and reaches her hand out innocently to David while Matteo turns bright red. “You must be David.”

“That’s me,” David says, so casual that it can’t be anything but nervous, but he still sounds like he is laughing and he hasn’t let go of Matteo’s hand yet even to shake hands with his mother so it seems like a good sign.

“I made lasagna,” Mama Florenzi offers, glancing over at Matteo like she’s trying not to hope for too much. Lasagna used to be Matteo’s favorite, but he’s always been too lazy to make all the layers and wait for it to bake. She had only ever made it on the really good days. Luckily, Matteo thinks this might be a good day.

“Sounds great, mama,” Matteo says, and then she’s wrapping him in a hug. He had thought he had missed her before, but he didn’t realize how much until she was standing right in front of him. He squeezes her tight and they both pretend their eyes are wet when they pull away.

“Sorry that I wasn’t here for you very often, darling,” she whispers. “Or that you felt you had to keep secrets from me.”

“It’s okay,” Matteo says, and he knows that it is.

She gives him a watery smile, and then hugs David too, much to his apparent surprise, and Matteo probably should have warned him that the people in his life tend to be huggers. David awkwardly hugs her back, raising an eyebrow at Matteo over her shoulder, and Matteo can only shrug innocently at him. He’s smiling anyway, and so is David.

“My house is a mess,” Mama Florenzi explains to David as she pulls away, already moving to start on her way towards home. “But it’s not as messy as it used to be. I wasn’t expecting Matteo to start inviting over guests.”

“That’s okay, Mrs. Florenzi,” David assures her.

“Please, call me Mama,” she says, waving formalities aside. David looks so baffled and overwhelmed that Matteo wants to laugh and cry at the same time. He’s pretty sure he’s very close to doing both at once. He feels like he’s floating, not because he’s stuck in his head but because there’s nothing heavy about this.

“Did she just adopt me?” David mouths in Matteo’s direction as they walk, and Matteo grins at him with another shrug. David looks in between him and his mother again, biting his lip, and then smiles quietly to himself as he looks up at the trees. Matteo pretends that he doesn’t see the shy relief that crosses his face, but squeezes his hand anyway. David squeezes it back. It feels like there’s nothing to go wrong again.

 

They walk back to Matteo’s flat in the dark, jumping between streetlights and pulling each other in between buildings for giggles and kisses. It’s late enough that hardly anyone passes them and dark enough that no one sees their faces. Their hands are clasped as they pull apart and then back together on the sidewalk.

“My mom is never going to invite me back to her house again without you,” Matteo tells him.

“I think I’m her new favorite,” David agrees sagely, then grins and loops his arm around Matteo’s waist as they walk. They are swaying slightly just from laughing and Matteo’s extreme lack of general imbalance. “Do you know what that means?”

“What?” Matteo asks.

“It means you get to meet Laura,” David declares.

Matteo looks over at him in confusion, but can only make out hints of his expression in the moonlight. But he can see the small curl to David’s hair and his eyes shimmering with the reflection of the lights around them and that grin that Matteo loves so much. At David's signature cocky tilt of his head, Matteo says, “But I already know Laura.”

“Not as my boyfriend, you don’t.”

Matteo’s stomach is flipping and it won’t stop. He can’t really control himself anymore after being so overwhelmed with so much David in such a short amount of time, and it’s only been a couple days since they were officially together. Fear had really cut down time they could have otherwise spent, for both of them, and Matteo is tired of being afraid.

He grins. “Oh, is that what I am?”

“I hope so,” David admits, and it’s so soft that Matteo kisses him again.

“Okay,” Matteo smiles, and then whines as he remembers, “Laura hates me.”

“Laura does not hate you!”

“Yes, she does,” Matteo draws out with a pout. “I was weird about her having a girlfriend and then she told me not to be an asshole and now she hates me.”

“Matteo,” David laughs. “She was rude because _you_ had a girlfriend and she knew how much I liked you. I’m pretty sure she’ll forgive you.”

“Hmph,” Matteo grumbles, tipping his nose into David's hoodie which causes them to wobble slightly as they walk again, and while he’s not entirely sure that’s why Laura had confronted him, he’ll believe it if David does. “Would it help her to know that I had broken up with Sara before I kissed you?”

“You had?” David asks, sounding genuinely surprised, and Matteo is not sure he’s offended or not.

“Yeah,” Matteo admits, and he’s still mumbling into the warmth that is David but he knows David hears him.

“Oh,” David says. There’s a pause where Matteo can only hear their footsteps on the concrete, and then, “Because of me?”

“No,” Matteo assures him. “I was just tired of pretending.”

“Okay,” David grins, and then he stops under a streetlight to look at him and Matteo swears he is literally glowing. “Hey, there’s a music release countdown party this Saturday, and I was wondering if you’d like to come?”

“As your boyfriend?” Matteo asks.

“As my boyfriend,” David agrees quietly. When Matteo seems to pause, he immediately adds, “No one there will share anything. You can invite your friends if you want, I’d just… like you to be there.”

There’s another pause where Matteo reminds himself that there is no more being afraid. He’s tired of pretending and he’s tired of being afraid. “Okay.”

David grins and there’s an awkward silence filled with that word again accompanied with the flipping stomach and butterflies and warmth that seems to stem from deep inside of Matteo. It's the word that his mom had used, and that David had used, and that Matteo had used too except for in any situation except towards David himself. He loves David’s smile, he loves David’s hair and how he always seems to be wearing a beanie, he loves how David gets along with his mom and his flatmates, and also that he plays the same video games and that they can spend all day together and never run out of things to talk about, and he loves how David can be snarky confident and carefully hesitant all at the same time. He loves David.

David opens his mouth to say something, but then it seems to change as it comes out of his mouth as, “Laura is going to be so mad at me for staying out so late.”

Laura, it seems, is terrifying for everyone.

“I have school tomorrow,” Matteo agrees.

They start walking again, and Matteo thinks their hands haven’t stopped touching all day. And then he thinks, fuck it.

“Hey guess what,” he says.

“What?” David asks.

 _Too soon_ , Matteo’s reasonable part of his head says, but it’s overwhelmed by the roar of the rest of him saying, “I love you.”

David physically stops walking again to stare at him, and it’s dark but the stars are shining, and Matteo can’t really bring himself to regret it. He shrugs like it’s all casual, even though this is the complete opposite of casual, and his heart is beating loud in his chest as he waits for David to do something other that stare at him like he is one of the stars himself. And then he’s being pressed against a wall, being kissed within an inch of his life, and David says, “I love you too.”

It’s the most like a teenager Matteo has ever felt. They’re crazy, and stupid - they just barely got their acts together - but they are also in love.

He draws David closer and kisses him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is plot? I don’t know anymore. It's been a rough week in my life, so have an emotional support chapter. I just write about whatever I want to address and I’ll tie it all together eventually. Maybe if we have enough fics that mention going to therapy and Matteo’s MI, Druck will finally address it too. Idk if religion is enough of a hot button issue to give a warning or something, so I left it sort of simmering blatantly in the background. The rest is just... really fucking fluffy.
> 
> I forgot to mention last time but because the last chapter was so much longer than I expected, 12 chapters is the official number! It is now the mysterious 13th that may or may not (will probably) happen, but I’m too lazy to change the chapter count. My chapters keep getting longer, but luckily I don’t think you mind. Feedback is always valid, feel free to tell me whatever you want to see happen or what made you laugh or cry or smile, and I die with every kudos, but honestly, even if you’re just reading every update or binging it just now, I love y’all too.


	11. nobody

There is a picture of David and Matteo trending on twitter. Not that anyone would know it was Matteo, because it’s night and dark and grainy, but it’s clearly David with him as they walk down the street. Half his face is shining from the light of a nearby window, covering Matteo’s, but Matteo can recognize the expression of David laughing anywhere. So can, apparently, whoever had taken the picture, and what seemed like the entirety of the internet.

But they’re not really focusing on the laugh picture. They’re focusing on the kiss picture, which puts Matteo’s whole love life on display and nobody even knows it’s his.

It’s not worth panicking over. Matteo’s face is hidden the whole time. He doesn’t know if the photographer had done it on purpose or if it was just a bad angle, but it’s trending because people are trying to find the #mysterylover of David Schreibner. 

They don’t even know if it’s a girl or a guy, which makes Matteo want to laugh, but he’s too busy feeling a flurry of other emotions to see the humor in this yet. There’s no way anyone would ever think it’s Matteo. For all they know, it’s a girl with short hair. Or some dude that had toured with David, or someone he had met at a party, or literally anyone because the picture is so dark that it can’t reasonably be narrowed down to anyone specific without lots of other proof.

Hans texts him asking if everything is alright, which is the reason that Matteo knows something happened in the first place. He ignores the text.

He can feel Mia glancing over at him in the school hallway, and Hanna too, which makes him paranoid. His skin feels like it’s itching. It’s one thing to see all the pictures of David online and know someone had snuck a picture of him but it’s completely different knowing that it will happen to Matteo now too, even when they are just walking home from Matteo’s mother’s house.

_ No one knows it’s me _ , he reminds himself, and resists the urge to ditch math class for a smoke outside in the courtyard and then never come back to school again.  _ Not a lot of people at school care about twitter gossip anyway _ .

“Yo, dude!” Jonas calls across the hallway, jogging to catch up to Matteo on their way to class before flinging his arm around his shoulders. Matteo flinches in surprise upon contact, still stuck in his own head, and Jonas ducks his voice lower as they walk, “I’ve been meaning to ask. That guy that you mentioned last Friday. Did you ever talk to him? Are you okay?”

It takes Matteo way too long to connect the dots. It feels like it had been forever since he had told the boys about David, or at least a boy, but reflecting back, it really had only been less than a week. His friends still think he’s been hiding away in his room because he’s been sad and rejected. They don’t know a thing about late night kisses, and making pasta in Matteo’s kitchen, and him finally reaching out to his mother. They don’t know how weightless in love he had been until getting Hans’ text in his first class of the day. But explaining is not exactly on the top of Matteo’s priority list right now.

“Yeah,” he says distractedly. “We talked.”

“And?” Jonas asks.

“And…” Matteo doesn’t even know how to finish his sentence. 

Jonas takes one look at his face and then is dragging him into a nearby empty classroom and closing the door behind them. “Okay. You know you can talk to me, ja?”

The seriousness of his voice jolts Matteo from whatever cloud he feels like he’s lost in, and he doesn’t know if Jonas’ voice sounds like he knows or if he’s just being paranoid a bunch of internet sleuths are going to track him down and interrogate him at school. “What are you talking about?”

Jonas glances through the classroom door window, checking to make sure no one is listening, before sighing. “I saw David Schreibner stay after at your place Friday night.”

Matteo freezes. “Did anyone else…?”

“Nein,” Jonas is quick to assure him. “I only had a couple drinks, because I’ve been trying to cut down, you know, and spend a clearer time with Hanna, but everyone else was too plastered to notice when we kicked them out.”

“Okay…” Matteo says slowly because he still doesn’t know what Jonas wants from him. He’s still figuring out how to deal with all this attention that he didn’t expect to get, and last time he checked on twitter people were making theories about the #mysterylover being youtubers or other band members they apparently ship David with, and then Matteo got to thinking that David would probably be better with them anyway because they know what to do when someone posts a picture of them online and Matteo’s face is even  _ hidden  _ and he can’t cope, which means David is probably going to abandon him anyway because he needs someone stable and-

“Hey,” Jonas interrupts, taking Matteo’s arms and looking him in the eyes. “Breath. In and out… just like that. In. Out.”

Matteo follows his breath until he is feeling like he isn’t spiraling into oblivion, and then more until he feels like he is on solid ground. Jonas’ gaze is calm and Matteo slowly comes to feel that stable presence of Jonas’s hand on his arm and the rest of the world coming into focus. He’s probably got the best friend in the world.

“Sorry,” Jonas says. “I shouldn’t have dropped that on you. He’s the guy, right? The one that you mentioned?”

Matteo nods, and Jonas guides them both to sit down on a nearby table with a quiet, “You’ve seen the pictures?”

Matteo nods again.

“I’m sorry, bro. I know what it’s like to see someone you like out with someone else so if you want to talk or something-”

“Jonas,” Matteo says, dumbfounded. “I’m the one in the pictures.”

Jonas stares at him and then lets out a strangled laugh that comes out in one breath, “Shit, dude. Good for you. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” But then he realizes that Matteo is still not smiling, in fact he hasn’t moved at all, and he frowns. “Oh, wait. There’s still something wrong, isn’t there?”

“I’m all over the internet,” Matteo whispers.

“Okay,” Jonas says, then says again more reassuring, “Okay. Let’s walk through this. First, no one can recognize you. I couldn’t even recognize you in those pictures and I’ve known you since you were seven, so no one will find out. Second, you don’t have to tell anyone it’s you. You don’t owe anyone anything, and you don’t have to come out to the world if you don’t want to. People will lose interest within the day, and you will be safe, Matteo. Everything will be fine.”

“But, David-”

“David seems like the type of person who would understand. Now repeat after me,” Jonas declares. “I, Matteo Florenzi-”

“This is stupid,” Matteo mutters.

“Nope, it’s not, now you have to repeat after me. I, Matteo Florenzi, am super cool, and am hooking up with  _ David fucking Schreibner _ , and everything will work out.”

Despite everything he might be feeling, Matteo blushes. If someone had told him a couple months ago that he’d be dating David, he’d say they were also smoking too much. It’s more than that too. His friends support him, his mother is okay, and he’s got a super hot boyfriend who loves him and will hopefully not realize how much better he can do anytime soon. His life is good. For the first time, it really does seem like everything will work out.

“We aren’t hooking up,” Matteo says, because it doesn’t feel like those two words even come close to scratching the surface of what he and David are.

Jonas grins at him, “So you’re what? Dating? Boyfriends?”

Every word seems to small. Matteo can feel a whole galaxy inside of him of what he feels for David. He makes Matteo happy when he hadn’t often pictured a future that was happy, and he opened up a doorway that allows Matteo to simply be himself and be loved for it anyway. It’s hard to put that acceptance and love into one word. 

They are soft nights in bed whispering stories from when they were younger, and they are holding hands as they learn more about themselves, and they are kissing under the stars like no one will ever find them. They are a quiet secret just for themselves. They live in their own world, and Matteo doesn’t want it to crash down. The pictures on the internet are a free fall and Matteo doesn’t know where he’ll land.

But he wants Jonas to know about David too. He wants more nights in their apartment with his flatmates cooking dinner, and he wants David joining him and the boys in their video games, and to dance with him at parties instead of avoiding looking over at him. With David, Matteo suddenly finds himself wanting everything. He doesn’t usually want much.

“I love him,” Matteo admits.

“And does he?” Jonas asks. “Love you?”

“Yeah,” Matteo says easily, ducking his head to hide his embarrassed smile.

“Dude,” Jonas knocks his shoulder against Matteo’s with a smile too. “That’s awesome.”

A couple people enter through the door, chatting as they make their way to their seats, and Matteo starts at the sudden increase in volume in the room. None of the students seem to realize they might have interrupted an intimate conversation. Jonas looks over at the group, then at Matteo, and they both remember they have class at the same time.

“Want to ditch?” Jonas asks.

Matteo doesn’t think he can stand being at school much longer. There are too many people there, and he’s afraid someone might take one look at him and realize that he looks like the shadowy pictures on twitter. Even with the small classroom group, he can feel his anxiety returning. He nods and gathers his backpack onto his shoulder before slouching out of the room after Jonas, who holds up his phone victoriously from where he was typing.

“Abdi and Carlos say they’ll come! Boys night out? You owe me a ping pong rematch.”

It sounds lighthearted and fun. Matteo nods again as he feels a small grin creeping up on him again. “I’m going to kick your ass,” he warns.

“Hardly,” Jonas snorts.

 

Matteo does not win at ping pong. The first round he had come close to beating his friends, and the second time he had only been a point behind in second place, but Abdi still remains the ping pong champion. Sometimes it’s a little unfair how Matteo can never win anything. Jonas always wins video games, Abdi is a savage at ping pong, and Carlos can smoke them in a food eating contest, but Matteo is something of a middle man. Not terrible, but not amazing either. 

It’s just how it seems to go.

They had gathered around the ping pong table around the time final classes would be getting out and sprawl in various sitting positions. Matteo leans against the table to watch his friends goof around, showing each other pictures or teasing Carlos when he texts Kiki. And then they head on twitter.

“Yo, Matteo, so this is really you?” Abdi asks, squinting at his screen as he scrolls through.

“Ja,” Matteo admits.

“Sick,” Carlos says wisely. He has to lean over Abdi’s shoulder to look at all the posts but then abruptly cackles when he sees one and forces Abdi to stop scroll with an intrusive arm. “Wait, wait, wait. Bro. You’ve  _ got  _ to read this one out loud.”

Abdi cackles too, and doesn’t stop giggling even as he is reading it. “I know there’s a lot of discourse,” he reads out loud. “But David’s #mysterylover  _ has  _ to be a girl, no man has fingers that pretty.”

“What?” Matteo asks in disbelief, pulling forward to stare at Abdi’s screen too. He can barely see the image because Abdi is shaking with laughter. Carlos practically folds over and falls off the ping pong table, and even Jonas is laughing - that traitor. But sure enough, someone has focused in on the only part of Matteo really visible in the picture, his hands around David’s neck, and is analyzing that alone.

Matteo has avoided looking at the tag just to avoid having a panic attack again, but he snatches the phone away from Abdi to scroll through it. Apparently, there are lots of guesses focused on his hands, comparing them to pictures of other celebrities, and lots of jokes making fun of that too. Some people take the scavenger hunt seriously, others call for them to leave David and the #mysterylover alone, a lot of people are saying they wish they could be the one kissing him, but mostly there are lots of memes. Matteo can cope with memes.

Jonas looks at him nervously, ready to take the phone from him if need be, but Matteo reads out loud, “I can’t tell if the photographer is just really bad, or if they enjoy seeing us go insane.”

Carlos snatches the phone away to read another in between giggles, “I can only see one strand of hair but I already know what whoever this #mysterylover is could never match David’s hair prowess.”

“You do have really bad hair, Matteo,” Jonas agrees humorously.

“But his hands!” Abdi exclaims, his hand to his heart. “His beautiful hands!”

“Fuck off,” Matteo grumbles, beat red.

He shoves at Abdi, but Abdi takes his chance and catches Matteo’s hand between his to hold it up to his face and evaluate it. He jabs Carlos in the side with the wheezing laugh of, “Bro, look at his  _ nails _ . Aren’t they the most pretty things you’ve seen in your life?”

“Beautiful,” Carlos chorkles. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

“I don’t know, boys,” Jonas says, joining in on the fun to lean in over Matteo’s hand. “They look like chickenshit to me.”

“Are we sure it’s even Matteo in the picture?” Carlos asks, immediately jumping in on this new bandwagon of banter. “That singular strand of hair doesn’t look like Matteo’s.”

“It’s your mom’s,” Matteo informs him, snatching his hand back, and Abdi lets out a small, “Ooooh.”

On the ping pong table, Matteo’s phone goes off and he moves to check it. He’s only slightly disappointed when he finds that it isn’t David. David hasn’t said anything all day. His social media remains empty as well, and Matteo has only come up with a couple excuses. One, David is busy meeting with his management team about what to do with this situation, or two, he thinks Matteo is freaking out and he doesn’t want to deal with him. But at this point, Matteo is more freaking out about not being contacted than he had been about the entire trending situation.

He reads a series of texts from Amira instead, interspersed within the last hour, and swears under his breath. In his panic to leave the school, he had forgotten he was studying with her today. Luckily, her messages seem kind, and ask if he wants to reschedule. 

Matteo types out some vague excuse about how they can study next week, and turns back to his friends who are all watching him. 

“Is that your boyfriend?” Abdi asks.

It’s so casual of a question that Matteo has to once again reframe his entire relationship he thought he had with his boys. One day, he’ll stop being surprised by his friends talking about him having a boyfriend so easily, but he wonders if that surprise and happiness would ever fade away when it refers to David. David, his boyfriend. David, who all of twitter wants to date, is Matteo’s boyfriend.

But it had not been David texting him, so he shoves the phone into his back pocket with an awkward, “Uh, no.”

“He’ll call you eventually,” Jonas says helpfully, and the rest of the boys nod in agreement. “You boys want to order pizza? Or have another rematch?”

“Pizza!” Carlos and Abdi agree at the same time. 

 

Matteo doesn’t stick around long. He shoves on another jacket over his grandpa sweater as the sun begins to set and he walks through the streets of Berlin. It is different alone. Matteo has never liked being alone. He has too many thoughts that he’d rather just ignore and he’s tried a very long time trying not to think or feel them. 

But today, he thinks of David, and it’s not altogether a bad thought. A worrisome one, considering the chaos of the internet and the fact that everyone is speculating publicly about his love life, but it’s not bad. He checks his phone again, and feels a sudden rush of deja vu. He has to remind himself a couple times that it’ll be okay. 

Matteo goes through his list of friends again and tells himself that he won’t be abandoned. Jonas stuck with him through a panic attack that morning. Abdi and Carlos were idiots but they also always knew how to lighten the mood. Amira wasn’t angry about him ditching studying. He still hasn’t talked to Hanna but she’s in his periphery, and she had looked concerned today. So had Mia, and Hans had checked up on him. Sara doesn’t even seem mad at him anymore. David had left before because he was afraid of how Matteo might react to the inevitable days like today but he chose to come back. He could do that again. Everything will work out.

This time, Matteo believes it.

He approaches the gate to an address that David had given him once and casually slips into the apartment complex when an old woman opens it to get through security. When confronted with a directory, he scans carefully for  _ Schreibner _ , approaches the stairs, then takes a deep breath and climbs. A couple flights up he finds a door to an apartment that Matteo has never been to before. He knocks anyway.

Laura opens it, blinking at him as some french operatic music blasts behind her, and then looks back into the apartment. She has to reach around a corner to turn the music down, but once she does, she turns back to Matteo and greets with a concerned, “Hey. How are you?”

She does not look like she hates him, which is at least one relief. Matteo shifts onto one foot awkwardly and nods before realizing he should probably say more than that. “Is, uh, David here?”

Laura glances back again, considers him a moment, and then opens the door a little farther for him. Matteo still hesitates with the invitation, suddenly filled with the worry of why David might be avoiding him, and Laura sighs.

“You know that speech I gave you?” she tells him. “About not hurting people when you’re figuring yourself out? My brother holds a lot of things in, and I don’t think he knows that can hurt people too. He may not reach out, but he’ll be relieved to see you.”

Laura gestures inside again, holding the door open wider, and Matteo finally steps through. He pauses in the entryway to look around. It’s more homey than he would have expected from the apartment building but knowing what he does about Laura and David, it seems perfect. There are plants by the windows with music scattered across an old wooden piano, a lumpy brown couch in the middle of the living room, and shoved in the corner where the last of the light of the day hits, there is a drawing table covered in black and white sketches.

“David’s,” Laura says, following his eye. “Maybe he’ll show you one day.”

When Matteo look over at her curiously, she explains with a soft smile, “He wanted to be an artist, before all this. The band was my idea, and it was never meant to get so big. I don’t know if we’ll ever be used to it.”

Matteo wants to be able to flip through this drawings and take in every single one of them. What would they say about David? What does he draw, and when does he take the time to do it, and would he ever give up music and songwriting to go back to it? Why do they all look like they are in jagged coal, with angry lines and sharp edges? Is that just how David draws?

Laura pulls his attention away by guiding him to a small hallway with two rooms on either side, and nods to the left. The door is closed. Matteo wonders if David heard him come in. And then Laura leaves him and turns around the corner to where Matteo would assume is the kitchen, abandoning Matteo on his own.

He knocks on the door. “David?”

Something shuffles from inside the room. It takes so long for David to open the door that Matteo would have almost been afraid he wasn’t home. Instead, it just makes him afraid that he is not wanted. 

He is halfway through turning away and ditching entirely, when the door opens, revealing David in a worn t-shirt and sweats and an incredulous expression that softens the moment his gaze meets Matteo’s. Matteo had wondered if he’d be mad at David when he got here, or if this would be something sad, or maybe they’d talk it out and realize this wasn’t going to work, but all he feels is relief.

“Matteo,” David breathes. His hair is a mess and it doesn’t look like he’s left the house. 

“Cabin fever?” Matteo asks stupidly, instead of everything he wants to ask.

David chokes out a laugh, running his hands through his hair self consciously to put it back in place, but without thinking, Matteo’s hands moves up to ruffle it back in place. David looks like he has something amusing he wants to say to that, but instead he whispers, “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Matteo admits. He looks back at the room that David has apparently holed himself away in and asks, “Are you?”

“I thought you might think I wouldn’t be worth it,” David admits back at him.

Matteo’s lips quirk up at the humor of it, of the thought of ever thinking that David wasn’t worth everything, and teases, “I thought it would be the opposite. Maybe I was hoping for a better camera angle.”

“You’re not like that,” David says so quickly that Matteo can barely let the joke finish. David had joked before that Matteo was just trying to sleep with him because he was famous but there is no hesitation in this conviction. It helps that he’s absolutely right. Matteo does not do things for attention.

“I had a panic attack this morning.” Matteo confesses.

David almost flinches, retreating into his room a step, but Matteo follows him in. “I’m sorry. I knew that this would drag you into this and hurt you, but I thought I could pretend this wouldn’t happen unless we wanted it to and-”

“David,” Matteo interrupts, closing the distance and grabbing David’s hands to hold them against his heart. David’s fingers immediately grip tightly to Matteo’s jacket, keeping him close, and Matteo whispers more quietly, “I wasn’t- but I’m okay.”

David takes a deep breath and looks down at Matteo’s chest, his fingers running along his jacket zipper, and asks the unexpected question of, “Do you know why I first came out as trans?”

Matteo shakes his head. He hadn’t really thought about it. In his head, David was someone who had always been proud of who he was, and who had found acceptance in his sister and took things in stride. But when David continues, Matteo thinks he might have just been ignorant, or that maybe this was one of the things that Laura had mentioned he hid.

“I didn’t want to,” David admits. “When I moved out of my mom’s house with Laura, I thought I’d start over in a place where I would only be myself. I was passing and I didn’t think anyone needed to know. But when Laura and I sold our album and it got super big... I got some messages from some boys in my old neighborhood. I went to our publicist because I was worried, and she said that it was best to come out on my own, just in case. It took me months to decide that was what was best, and that I could be someone that I would have wished I had a couple years ago to look up to, but it was terrifying. I’m glad I did and I get to do super cool events and stuff, but if it wasn’t for Vampire City’s popularity… I’m not sure I would have. Not as soon, anyway, and never as publicly.”

David looks up, his eyes level with Matteo’s, and adds, “People can say really hurtful things. Just being myself, I get a lot of attention. Most people were really excited, but- It was only me getting hurt, if it didn’t work out.”

“But everyone supported you,” Matteo says, filling in the blanks. There’s no way that they hadn’t. Not with where David is now, and how cool that he can be. 

“And that was amazing,” David agrees. “But it’s always overwhelming, and now, it’s not just me that can get hurt.” He pulls away before Matteo can stop him, running his hand through his hair again. It only makes it more wild. “They’re searching the internet to find you, Matteo, and you don’t want the attention either. It’ll happen again, now that they know you exist. And I don’t want that for you. You should get a choice.”

“But what if this is my choice?” 

The question is sharp and fills the room. Matteo hopes that Laura cannot hear them. It’s much more hurt than he was planning on letting on with all this not explaining or calling because David has already come up with the answer he expects, and now he’s drawing away because he’s trying to be a martyr. It’s hard when Matteo can picture how simple this all could be.

If it weren’t for David, Matteo wouldn’t have been okay today. He would have taken much longer to realize that he could be accepted, and then he wouldn’t have known that Jonas would always be there to help him through his depressive moods or anxiety or that his friends would tease him about boyfriends so casually, and he wouldn’t have known what he knows now. People are not his father. His friends are kind, and will always be here for him, and Matteo is determined to prove that he can do the same for David.

“I don’t care,” he says, stronger this time. “You said so yourself. I have my friends. And I have you. You don’t have to be worried about how your life might affect people, because I’m not going anywhere no matter what and I love you.”

David barely pauses again before answering with a soft, “I love you too.”

When Matteo opens his arms, David is the one to step into them and wrap his arms tightly around his waist like he’s finally arriving home. Matteo can feel all of David’s muscles relax against his and his head falling lightly against Matteo’s shoulder with a soft kiss. Matteo buries his face in David’s hair. Both of them breath together in the quiet of the room until Matteo can feel everything shift into alignment. The air is calm.

It’s only then that Matteo pokes David in the belly with a teasing, “Are you okay now?”

David snorts, hugging Matteo tighter until his hands are trapped, and answers with a soft kiss and a, “Yeah.”

“No more running?” Matteo asks.

“No more running,” David agrees. 

“Your sister let me in,” Matteo mutters into David’s hair, letting the mood slip into something more lighthearted as he continues, “Turns out she doesn’t hate me.”

“I told you,” David laughs, swinging them back and forth together as they continue clinging. He pulls away just to grab Matteo’s hand and nod towards the door. “Should we tell her I’ve stopped panicking?”

Matteo drags David back into their embrace to kiss him again, whining, “Do we have to?”

“Yes,” David decides, and then forces Matteo to follow him out of the room when Matteo refuses to depart from his side. Matteo doesn’t put up much fight against following him, but does manage to press him against the wall for one last kiss before they can be spotted David’s sister. David doesn’t seem to mind that either.

Laura takes one look at their held hands before pointing down at the pie she is cutting up with a knife. “Apple pie?”

Matteo doesn’t have to be asked twice. He sits down at the table in front of her, and gladly accepts a plate, as Laura continues eyeing them with a little smirk. Matteo can see her having a silent conversation with David that he doesn’t interrupt. David smiles down at his own plate of pie that Laura passes it to him, and taps his foot against Matteo’s under the table. They are alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laura is my “get your shit together” character that appears whenever someone needs advice. This is also my “he saves you right back” chapter, otherwise known as “David acts like an idiot pt. II”. 
> 
> I said last week that I had had a rough week, and things haven’t changed much since then (most of what took so long in posting this chapter was writing the first half), but I’m honestly so thankful for all your little comments. They brightened my day every time. While chapters have been getting longer, expect the last chapter to be much longer than usual! We’re wrapping things up, folks! I will be updating my tags soon to reflect the final state of this fic, and so if you've got any suggestions, let me know.


	12. to noise making (sing)

It’s a Saturday evening and all Matteo’s friends are shoved into a van as they drive through the streets of Berlin. Usually, they would have had a couple drinks by now, but it doesn’t feel like that kind of night. There is a giddiness to it that doesn’t need alcohol. They are going to a party, David’s party, and everything has never looked more up.

When Matteo looks in the rearview mirror, he can see Jonas and Hanna whispering together in the back seat. They are holding hands, and he remembers how Jonas had seemed so confident they would get back together. It’s sweet, Matteo thinks, seeing them take their time. Beside them, Abdi is leaning forward to take advantage of any chance to talk to Sam but somehow Mia had gotten involved in the conversation, and as much as Matteo can tell that Abdi is disappointed, Kiki gets involved too from where she is sitting on Carlos’ lap.

It leaves Amira and Matteo in the front as she drives, Matteo sinking into the passenger seat to stare out the window. Despite the chaos in the back of the van, they are quiet. Amira focuses as she drives, the same way she focuses all her attention on everything, but whenever she checks behind her for cars she smiles at her friends anyway. It seems involuntary, and Matteo doesn’t even know if she realizes she’s doing it, but he gets it. He makes eye contact with Jonas in the back and they both grin at each other.

“So where’d you get the car?” Matteo asks Amira.

“It’s Elias’,” Amira says. She doesn’t look away from the road. “He, Yousef, and the rest of his friends have been with David and Laura all day helping their management team, and I get to use it when they’re gone. Mostly, I use it to deliver pizzas. I’m trying to save up to travel to Australia, or France, after graduation.”

“That explains the smell,” Matteo smirks at her. It does smell a lot like pizza in the van. He had mostly dismissed it thinking that it was Carlos.

Amira wrinkles her nose, probably smelling Carlos too, and changes the subject from her pizza delivery job without much to add. She glances over at him meaningfully. “I hear you invited Sara.”

“Yeah,” Matteo admits, sliding back against the window. “Apparently David made friends with Leonie but didn’t want to make things awkward by inviting her. But they might as well come.”

“Is that a smart idea-” Amira starts, but Matteo rolls his eyes.

“I told Sara I liked David when she was drunk. So she knows. A little.”

“Does Leonie?”

Matteo shrugs, and pretends he doesn’t care. It’s not like Leonie had been some sort of competitor for David’s attention. It just seemed like she had spent more time with David whenever Matteo was there. If she shows up today and learns that Matteo is David's boyfriend, he has promised himself he won’t be smug about it. The same goes for if she already knows. “I don’t know what David has told her.”

In the back, Matteo can hear Abdi start to go off on a rant about dream interpretation and something about an octopus. Amira looks in the rearview mirror again, shares a smile with Matteo, and then turns the car into a parking lot of central Berlin. A highrise looms above them with Vampire City's record label plastered by the door.

“Okay,” Amira says simply, without further pressing, and Matteo loves that about her.

The second that the van has parked, everyone stumbles out into the street with a cheer, but Amira doesn’t leave the driver’s seat. Matteo frowns at her, already halfway towards leaving. She hasn’t even checked her makeup or her phone, leaving no explanation as to why she’s not coming, but when Matteo glances towards the building, he understands anyway.

“How’s Yousef?” he asks.

“I think we are dating,” Amira admits. They are no longer driving but her hands haven’t even left where they are sitting. In front of them, the rest of their friends are making their way across the parking lot. 

“Luigi, come on!” Jonas shouts at them, and Matteo calls back, “One second!”

Amira’s painted nails tap against the side of the steering wheel, and Matteo remembers, “I thought you said Muslims couldn’t date non-Muslims.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Amira starts. Matteo can tell she's mentally pulling together what parts are easiest to explain, and what she wants to tell him, and it’s only when she figures it out that she continues. She lets go of the steering wheel, and turns to meet Matteo’s eyes with a sigh. “The point of that rule has always been to find someone who supports my beliefs. There are things that I can’t share if I date someone who is not Muslim, and that is important to me, but… Yousef understands my values and lives by them even if he doesn’t believe in Allah. I know he won’t expect anything from me that I can’t give, which is important too, so... I think we will work.”

“And so you’re hiding in a car because…?” Matteo asks.

Amira looks back at the building, and the group of friends waiting for them, and then says carefully, “I haven’t told him any of that yet?”

It’s weird how much Amira can sometimes remind him of himself. They seem like completely different people. They are completely different people. But they can also be outsiders with people they otherwise belong with. Amira is a Muslim woman whose friends always drink, or hook up with boys, or do things as small as eat meat on their pizza. Matteo is gay, and he has depression and anxiety, and he spent so long trying to blend in that his world had almost faded entirely to grey.

Support, to them, was hoping that the people they trusted would be able to see every aspect of themselves and love them anyway. But maybe that was everyone’s definition of support.

“That’s stupid,” Matteo tells her, because no one who ever looked at Yousef and Amira together could ever question that he’d walk to the ends of the earth for her.

Amira tosses a glare at him. “You do stupid things sometimes too.”

“Yeah, but I have a boyfriend,” Matteo says cheekily.

Amira punches him in the arm. She’s a lot stronger than Matteo would have given her credit for but then again, she’s had to put up with Elias most her life. Then she smiles at him. “I’m happy for you, you know.”

Matteo blushes, and he can hear their friends yelling at them again, so he shoos her towards the car door so that he doesn’t really have to say anything to that. “Yeah, yeah. Go find Yousef or something.”

Amira rolls her eyes but finally unbuckles her seat to step out of the van.

****

The party is on top of the highrise but Matteo’s friends decide to race all the way up the stairs like a bunch of goddamn idiots. Hanna joins Amira and Matteo as the sane few who decide not to waste their breath and take the elevator. They can still hear a stampeding of footsteps and the laughter of someone being shoved forward from a couple floors down by the time the elevator finally gets to them, and the ride up is peacefully quiet.

Unfortunately, by the time the elevator doors open again on the rooftop, Matteo can already see David floundering in a crowd of panting people who are trying to introduce themselves to him. Matteo almost wants to pretend they aren’t his friends. But then David looks over and catches his eye, with that giant grin of his, and Matteo finds he doesn’t mind.

David’s eyes track Matteo up and down, and every time his gaze lingers, Matteo becomes increasingly aware this is the most he’s done for his appearance in what is likely over a year. It’s just a floral button down and his least baggy jeans, which is nothing compared to what Hans came up with when Matteo came freaking out to him about it, but he wanted to look nice. Sue him. Everyone else looks nice. If anything, he blends in as far as effort.

David is looking at him like he couldn’t ever blend in anywhere. His grin becomes cocky, and suddenly Matteo finds himself dragged into the group by his friends, where he is met with clamoring voices and David reaching out for a hug. Matteo lets himself fall into it, wrapping his arms around David in greeting, with a soft, “Hi.”

“Hi,” David laughs against his head.

“It’s the _spark_ ,” Carlos mutters in awe next to them, and Matteo hides his embarrassed face against David while extending a hand to flip him off. He can already tell this is going to be a disaster.

“Ignore Carlos,” he mutters.

David does not ignore Carlos. Instead, he sticks out a hand and says, “Nice to meet you, Carlos,” because he’s too polite of a person not to.

Matteo groans and turns around to see his friends all pretending not to be as fascinated with this interaction as they are. One of David’s arms remains wrapped around his shoulder. Kiki looks like she’s about to pass out from excitement.

“I’m Kiki Machwitz,” she says, springing forward to shake David’s hand before her boyfriend can accept it. “You might remember me from that party a couple weeks ago?”

“Yeah, I do,” David smiles, and then to everyone’s surprise, he proves that he actually remembers names when they are told to him, because he turns to someone else in the group and says, “And you’re Sam, right?”

Sam grins, with an overly loud, “That’s me!”

Matteo quickly intervenes to introduce the rest of the group that David doesn’t know before anyone can get too excited or see if David remembers their names too. His boyfriend is impressive, but he really doesn’t want to test that luck. “And this is Hanna, Abdi, and Jonas.”

“Ah, Jonas,” David says knowingly. “Matteo’s best friend.”

“Hey!” Abdi and Carlos intervene, but Jonas only cackles.

“Wait until you’ve known him ten years, boys, and then you can claim to be his best friend.”

“You’re all my best friends,” Matteo sighs.

“Yeah, but you only told him about Jonas,” Abdi pouts.

“I literally only mentioned him once.”

“You mean to tell us,” Carlos says slowly. “That you didn’t tell your boyfriend about any of us?”

Matteo shrugs. He can see the girls quickly sliding away and out of this conversation. They’ve escaped into the crowd before he can hope for any of them to save him. Kiki plants a kiss on Carlos’ cheek and then vanishes as well. “Uh…”

“He told me that he has the best friends in the world.” David has a smug smile as he says this, like he knows Matteo hasn't said this at all but he’s saving his ass anyway, and as soon as they are alone, Matteo will probably tackle him to the ground in gratitude. It wasn’t that he doesn’t think his friends are the best, or wouldn’t have shared that, he and David have just had a lot more pressing things to deal with.

But now they don't, and his friends are here now, which makes it all the more better.

Jonas grins and says, “Of course we are,” which is completely valid. But then he continues, “But since he didn’t tell you much, I just I have to fill you in! Did Matteo ever tell you about how when he was in elementary school-“

Matteo groans. There is no story that begins that way that ends well, and especially not with Matteo. He was the kid who chugged chocolate milk cartons and stuck crayons up his nose, and no one but Jonas needs to know about that, _especially_ not David. “No elementary school stories!”

“Okay," Abdi bounds in. "If we can’t talk about that, I have so many questions for David. Like, do you get any super cool perks for being a celebrity? What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done? Oh! Or the weirdest person you’ve ever met, other than our Luigi.”

“Luigi?” David asks, sounding horrifyingly interesting in this conversation.

“Your boyfriend, Matteo,” Jonas informs him solemnly. “Alas, he is not just Italian in name, he is Italian in soul.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Matteo complains, but Carlos speaks over him with an excited, "You should try his pasta."

“I’ve had his pasta,” David says casually.

All three boys stare at him. Matteo wants to disappear. The closest he can get is worming himself closer to David like he might vanish if they somehow meld together. His friends have always been under the impression that Matteo’s pasta is a rare dish to be savored. The truth of it is that Matteo is just lazy, doesn’t go grocery shopping that often, and they always order out instead of actually cooking when they are together. The minute it becomes an option, they'll want pasta too.

“You’ve had Pasta a la Luigi?” Abdi whispers.

“Bro. Where’s our pasta?”

“It’s not that great,” Matteo mutters. “It’s just pasta. My mom makes better lasagna anyway.”

“That’s not true,” David disagrees. “You both make great food.”

Abdi, Carlos, and Jonas are still staring.

“You went to see your mom?” Jonas asks, in a way that is probably meant to sound casual but misses the mark entirely. His entire focus is on Matteo.

“With David?” Carlos adds.

While Matteo has always had secrets, his relationship with his mother has never been one of them. It’s hard to hide when you have to suddenly stop inviting friends over, or when your father abruptly leaves town, and you miss weeks of school on end trying to take care of your mother’s breakdowns and hold what is left of your tiny family together. Jonas had helped when it had gotten really bad, and Carlos and Abdi had come into his life when it was getting better, but never knew Matteo’s life without it.

Despite the gravity of it all, Matteo can only shrug and offers a smile, “Yeah.”

It’s enough for them to know that it’s okay. Jonas lets out a cheer and reaches in for a hug, with David too, and then Carlos joins, and Abdi quite literally leaps on them for a giant bear pile. Somewhere on the rooftop, someone turns on music, but it’s nothing compared to the sound of Matteo’s friends and David together.

****

By the time the sun sets, everyone has begun pairing off. It happens every party, leaving Matteo to watch against the wall, but this time, he knows it will not stay that way. He catches sight of Amira and Yousef holding hands, with Yousef more flushed about it than she is, and if anyone deserves that, she does.

Last time he checked, Abdi had somehow ended up making out with Sam, Carlos had disappeared with Kiki _again_ , and Jonas is with Hanna as per usual. Even Mia, who’s boyfriend is out of town, had begun meeting Elias and the rest of the balloon squad and is hanging out with them.

Matteo can see Leonie talking with David.

It seems to be a thing at parties. Leonie is legitimately friends with David. It’s weird. She hadn’t even blinked when seeing Matteo and David together, and Matteo doesn’t know what to make of that. It makes it hard to be smug. She hasn’t glared at Matteo all evening which is also weird.

Sara, on the other hand, grabs Matteo’s arm and forces his gaze away from where Leonie and David are talking with a whisper of, “What the _fuck_.”

Matteo stares. Sara isn’t one to casually swear. When she swears, she means it. They dated for months and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her say anything stronger than a) calling him an asshole, or b) swearing with the word ‘shit’. Sara looks legitimately shocked. Matteo takes it to mean that if Leonie had been briefed, she hadn’t told Sara.

“Uh… hi?” Matteo offers.

“You’re dating _David Schreibner?_ ” Sara asks, and Matteo wishes she wouldn’t be in so much disbelief. He has enough surprise of his own that he's trying to reconcile with reality, and he doesn’t think he can manage anyone else’s.

He does feel bad, however, that this wasn’t something he had thought to disclose when he had texted her an invitation to come. _Sorry for being an awkward ex, but you know how I told you about my celebrity crush on the guy your friend likes? you should come to his party, btw he’s my boyfriend now._ Yeah, no.

So he gives her a pass, assuming that there had been someone else who also probably should have said something. “Leonie didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Sara frowns. She looks over at where David and Leonie are talking with a small, “She knew?” She continues with no sign of leaving, even though Matteo has no idea what to do in this situation. He’s as clueless as she is. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she thought it’d be weird because we dated?” Matteo suggests.

“But I’m over that,” Sara says, dumbfounded, but then her eyes widen. “Oh my god, do you think she’s embarrassed because she still likes David? Because she could have told me.”

Matteo feels like he’s just a wall that she’s working through her feelings at. Especially when Sara is talking about David like the person she had come over to confront about dating David isn't standing right in front of her. He may not know anything about Leonie, but he has eyes. And based on how carelessly Leonie had accepted the fact David and Matteo are dating, he doubts she could have ever really liked David enough to be upset. She had probably thought David was an impossibility too.

“Uh… no?” he offers, not sure if he’s helping. “She isn’t glaring at me so…”

“You think?” Sara asks, as if Matteo hadn’t just specifically shared what he thought, and glances at her friend again. “She never isn’t glaring at you.”

“I don’t know, Sara,” Matteo sighs. “Maybe it’s because I’m not dating you.”

He means this platonically. He really does. Protective friends and all that. Matteo hadn’t exactly been in a good place when dating Sara, and had dragged her into it by association, and so he had always understood Leonie’s hatred of him.

But the way Sara asks, “Really?”, all hopeful and everything, makes Matteo think it hadn’t come across this way.

“I don’t know,” Matteo repeats helplessly.

“So you don’t think she likes David?” Sara asks again.

“Sara,” Matteo says, as seriously as he can, just to make sure she’s actually listening. “I don’t know.”

Sara stares at him with the sudden realization who she is talking to and then bites her lip. “Sorry. I just didn’t expect this when you said you liked David.”

Although they both knew the conversation had happened, Matteo hadn’t thought she’d acknowledge it. At the time, it had just been two people pining after someone. Two people who used to date, so it was an unlikely topic to begin with. Most importantly, Sara had been drunk enough that they could have easily pretended it didn’t happen. But now, there is only one person pining, they are both sober, and somehow the pining one isn’t Matteo.

“Surprise?” Matteo offers.

Sara laughs, and despite her shock, Matteo thinks she might genuinely be happy for him. Which is… nice. Matteo genuinely wants her to be happy too, even though her life might be stressful right now with moving, and a little to do with Matteo, and now this Leonie thing. But Sara will be okay. She has her own friends, and apparently Matteo to talk to, so he thinks things might work out for her.

“Should we go interrupt them?” Sara asks, turning towards David and Leonie again, and Matteo thinks they probably should. Just in case.

It’s not like the last party they’d been at, where David had seemed entirely unapproachable. This time, the second Matteo is by David’s side, David smiles at him and gives him a small kiss in greeting like it’s the most casual thing in the world. His arm loops around Matteo’s waist and Matteo bites back a smile. He can see Sara doing the same thing, for his sake, and he can see Leonie take her lead when she glances over at her friend and relaxes, just the slightest, like Sara would have been upset.

“God,” Leonie says, turning back to them. “You guys are going to be that gross couple, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” David grins, and then punctuates it with another kiss. Matteo grins.

“Sickening.” Leonie wrinkles her nose, but she’s smiling too.

****

It’s a couple hours to midnight, and Matteo watches David and Jonas riff off of each other on the guitar. The lights of the building paint the rooftop party a soft pink and yellow against the dark sky, but the stage they mess around on is a passionate orange. Jonas plays a couple chords, and David joins in, and it had only taken a couple minutes for it to dissolve into a guitar solo battle.

Matteo has spent most the night watching David get to know his friends. But it’s Jonas that he had thought that David would latch onto the most, with their love of music and politics, and sure enough, Matteo was positive they were going to be inseparable. Something inside of him glows when he sees two important parts of his world get along so well.

Hanna silently passes him a champagne flute from one of the tables nearby and sits next to him. Matteo takes it silently. He never quite knows what to do with Hanna around. When they talk, he somehow still misses her.

“Hey,” she greets, and Matteo thinks she might be the same way.

“Hey,” Matteo says.

They both drink from their glasses, searching for something to start a conversation, and right as Hanna opens her mouth, Matteo lands on an awkward and abrupt, “I didn’t have a crush on you. Just by the way.”

Matteo doesn’t have to walk Hanna through it like he had with Jonas. She just blinks at him, looks up toward the stage, and then smiles. “Okay.”

“That’s all you’re going to give me?” Matteo asks.

Hanna shrugs. “Ja. Doesn’t really matter who you had a crush on, does it? It happened, and I forgave you.” Then she glances towards the stage again with a lopsided smile and adds, “I think we have a type.”

Matteo laughs. They both watch Jonas and David play the guitar together, finally having declared a champion and bursting into something by Sam Smith together, and he has to look away because he’s suddenly so overwhelmed. It flows out of him in a smile that hasn't dissolved all night. “Ja, maybe.”

Hanna pokes at his cheeks, laughing too, and admits, "I like it when you're happy."

"I like it when you're happy too," Matteo tells her.

Hanna hums, and then says what she was probably going to in the first place, “So, I got a B+ on my latest math test.”

“Really?” Matteo asks. This is what he missed. Small bits of information shared because one of them was excited. Telling her things just to tell her about it. He holds up his cup for her to clink together in celebration. “That’s awesome!”

“Amira and Mia helped,” Hanna says bashfully, but they both know she was the one who did all of the work. She had always struggled at school. She'd been worse than Matteo at some point, even if that was hard to believe now.

“Amira is a godsend,” Matteo agrees, tossing in a teasing nudge and a, “Maybe you could help me with math now too.”

Hanna laughs again, and Matteo isn’t sure if it’s the lights or just Hanna, but her cheeks look pink and pleased. “I wouldn’t go that far. Besides, Amira tells me you’ve been doing very well.”

Matteo stops from where he’s halfway to drinking more champagne and has to lower it again. Although he means it to come out joking, he stumbles out a surprised, “You talk about me?”

“Yeah,” Hanna admits. She sets aside her flute and reaches out with one hand to hold his free one. “We were worried about you. Mia too. You seemed so… lost before. I didn’t know if I could say anything about it to you.”

“But not anymore?” Matteo asks.

“Not anymore,” Hanna smiles. A slow song starts playing behind them and Hanna stands and give his hand a squeeze before letting go. “Let’s go ask our men to dance?”

If this is a dream, Matteo wants to never wake up. He wants to stay floating forever in tonight with all of his friends around him and the man of his dreams always a few feet away. It feels like he’s finally reached the high he’d been searching for his entire life. It feels like no matter what, in no matter what universe, he’ll always end up here.

In the end, David gets to Matteo before he can, and sets aside Matteo’s drink.

“Can I have this dance, my lady?” he asks, with a cute little bow.

Matteo makes a show of pretending to consider before standing up with a probably woefully inaccurate and disastrous curtsy, because even on a good day he might as well be a baby deer learning to stand, and grins, feeling bold enough to wink, “Why thank you.”

This time Matteo knows it’s not the lights, because David's cheeks are full of color. He’s as beautiful as the day Matteo first saw him, with his floppy hair and his soft hand reaching for Matteo’s and god. His septum piercing. Matteo doesn’t think he gives it as much attention as he should. He’s always too caught up in his eyes. Or his smile. Or his everything.

Matteo is so fucking in love. He’s probably the luckiest guy in the world.

So they dance. Matteo has never danced anything in his life other than the floss, or the harlem shake, or whatever other monstrosity his generation has come up with. He doesn’t think David has either. It’s an awkward fumbling of hands, trying to figure out if they go on their waists or around their neck, and they keep stepping on each other’s toes, giggling, and then doing it all over again until finally David has enough and starts directing them.

“Back… now right. No Matteo, right! Not my right, your right!”

Matteo cuts off his laughter with a kiss instead. It’s a much more appealing option than stepping on David’s toes again or trying to keep track of his two left feet or dragging them both to the ground like one more minute of dancing inevitably will. David stops trying and kisses him again. They almost topple anyway.

“Get itttttt,” Abdi yells from literally out of nowhere.

Like some sort of cue, all of Matteo’s friends start to join in, and Matteo can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed. He should be, because this isn’t even his party and they’re literally a bunch of teenagers that crashed something put together by David and Laura’s management, but he’s not. 

David pulls away and rests his forehead against Matteo’s. He’s smiling too. “One day,” he promises. “We are going to actually learn to dance.”

“Okay,” Matteo snorts, but he believes it, because his boyfriend is probably the most determined person in the world.

David glances over at their friends, still catcalling them, and slides his nose against Matteo’s. They are so, so close. Matteo closes his eyes and tries to memorize the feel of it. David’s body close to his, his friends in the background, and feeling on top of the world. He’s afraid that if he opens his eyes, he’ll wake up and none of this will have happened at all.

“Do you think we can sneak away?” David whispers.

Matteo opens his eyes, and everything is still there. He offers, “To Detroit?”

“Ja,” David laughs. “To Detroit.”

Matteo pretends to mull it over but they both know they aren’t going to be fucking off to Detroit. They aren’t going anywhere. Not with everything so perfect here. He kisses David again, just to prove that he can, and then answers, “Nein. I like right now.”

“So do I,” David admits. He pulls away to look at a countdown projected onto the wall and smirks when he looks back at Matteo. “Want to get away anyway?”

“Okay,” Matteo smiles.

****

It’s an hour to midnight, and Matteo and David are running through the darkened, empty halls of the highrise trying to beat each other to the other side. They are close enough to still hear the music of the rooftop but it feels enough of a distance away that there is no ticking clock for them to return. There is just feet on worn carpeted floors and giggles and Matteo trying to shove David into a rolling chair but being far enough behind that it doesn’t work.

David wins. He is insufferably smug about it, without even opening his mouth, and Matteo huffs against the door they’ve raced to. The race was rigged to begin with. David is the type to wake up early and go for runs. Matteo is the type to sleep in until late afternoon on the weekends. So of course he wins.

“I win,” David says, just to make sure Matteo knows.

“Bastard,’ Matteo tells him.

“I’m your bastard though,” David pouts, and his eyes are so impossibly brown and wide, that Matteo's repeated thought of, _bastard_ , comes out fond instead.

“Ja,” Matteo agrees, quiet in the empty building. “You are.”

David grins and drags him into a quick kiss before opening the door behind them with a, “Come on.”

Matteo doesn’t know what the room is, but he’ll follow David anywhere.

It’s a plain office with everything in place like nothing is ever moved. At the very least, everything is always put back in its place. But Matteo doesn’t think David wants him in here because of the office space. It’s because when they look out the window, they can see all of Berlin below them. From this side of the building, Matteo can track the yellow window lights of where his flatshare is located, and to the park outside Amira’s house, and to all the streets that he’s spent his whole life traveling. Matteo hopes it looks like home to David too.

David joins him by the window and they both say nothing.

“My mom lives there,” David says eventually, pointing out at a square that makes up a rooftop of an apartment complex hidden in the mass of the city. It looks like an innocent building. It blends in. Matteo never would have thought it was special. Somehow it’s the first thing David sees.

 _That’s where David ran away_ , Matteo realizes, and his heart hurts.

“Where’d you go?” he asks.

David does what Matteo does not expect and points out in the distance at a night train speeding through. It exits the city. But if David had left, Matteo doesn’t know how much time David had gotten to associate Berlin with good things, and his heart hurts more for the boy by his side. The boy who deserves all the love in the world.

“My godmother,” David says. “In Hamburg.”

“Why’d you come back?” Matteo asks.

“Laura,” David sighs. “She didn’t even have to think before she left Berlin with me. She doesn’t talk to our parents either, and I felt guilty for so long because she never had to do that, so when she wanted to make music… I came back with her. We started playing in the streets there-” David points again, and then moves his finger, “- and our label contacted us there.”

It doesn’t feel like enough happy memories. Matteo points too. “I saw you play over there. At that concert venue.”

“That’s a good one,” David agrees. “I saw you there too.”

Matteo grins, and nods towards somewhere out beyond the museums and cathedrals of central Berlin, and past the waterway, and says, “I grew up there.”

“I met your mom there,” David adds.

“Mama,” Matteo corrects him solemnly.

“Right. Mama Florenzi,” David laughs. It dies down, and he pauses, before taking his turn and points somewhere almost out of sight from the window, barely visible in between some of the taller buildings, at a series of sloped roofs in the distance. Matteo knows the area well enough to recognize it as a fine arts university from pamphlets handed out at school that Matteo has always lost or thrown away. David looks at it like he’d never throw away one of their pamphlets.

“I’ve applied to go there,” he admits. “After this next album tour.”

“For music?” Matteo asks.

“No,” David answers, like he expected the question. He suddenly seems a bit shy, offering the information out like it might change Matteo’s image of him as some super cool musician. Matteo hasn’t thought of him as a singularly faceted person in a long while anyway. “I want to study film. Maybe animation, but I haven’t decided yet.”

Matteo thinks of the glimpses of drawings that he had seen when he had come to his apartment, and all the scattered dreams, and how David had once told him that he directs all of Vampire City’s music videos. They both aren’t meant for the life David lives now. It makes sense for him to want to be behind the camera, instead of in front of it.

It reminds Matteo that he doesn’t have a goal. He doesn’t have a list of universities to apply to like most his friends, and he doesn’t have ambition, and he has no clue where he is going. David had once asked him if he liked biology. Matteo couldn’t even answer that. But tonight it feels like one day he could figure it out.

Matteo smiles. “That sounds cool.”

“Ja?” David asks.

David's life is already cool. David is literally the coolest. David loves his music, and his fans, and his life is good, but Matteo would do anything to find the passion David has for exploring, and art, and everything in between. Matteo wants David to be limitless.

“Ja,” Matteo repeats. “Super cool.”

They point until the world becomes a sea of places they’ve been and places they want to go. And then they list things beyond the city. Hamburg, to meet David’s godmother. Madrid, to visit Mia when she’s gone. London, Paris, Detroit. Maybe they’ll see it all. But they’ll always come back here: to their friends, and families that they’ve built from scratch, and to each other. The building that David had first pointed at when sharing his part of the city becomes just an apartment building surrounded by a million happy places.

****

It’s midnight, and David sends the first notes of _Take Me To Church_ into the world as Vampire City’s new single for an unnamed album. Up so high, it feels like the whole city can hear them. It echoes through the skyscrapers and into the suburbs and into the atmosphere. Matteo hopes that somebody hears and feels as hopeful as he does too.

Laura joins him on the piano and sings. It occurs to Matteo that it’s not just the song that David had shared with Matteo anymore, alone in a studio with only an acoustic guitar, it’s a song for everyone now. It’s for Laura and her girlfriend, and for David who ran away from home, and for Matteo trying to read texts from his mother without breaking down. David hadn’t written a love song, he’d written about survival.

A couple of people take videos for social media, or a live feed, and it’s everyone else’s turn to make the song what they will and make it theirs. Matteo knows that within the hour, it’ll be playing on repeat on the radio.

It’s easy to catch onto the lyrics. His friends are singing it after the first chorus, arms wrapped around each other as they sway, and Matteo is dragged in between Sam and Hanna. To his left, he can see Sara and Leonie holding hands, and he drags them in too. They are a bundle of people singing at the sky, stumbling over lyrics and screaming off key, and Matteo loves every single one of them.

When the song turns slow, it’s David who sings with just him and his guitar.

Everyone cheers. Leonie screams so loud in Matteo's ear that he almost goes deaf but he can't look away from the stage. Matteo doesn't think anyone expected this other than Laura, who harmonizes with him like she's helped him practice a thousand times. Matteo knows why David doesn't sing. Singing is sharing a part of himself with the world that he is afraid to be seen. Heartbreak and fear. Loneliness and longing. Love. 

When David sings in front of a crowd, it's captivating and honest, and Matteo feels like he's holding so much pride that it encompasses all of him at once. 

When David meets his eyes, Matteo knows he’s looking at him. David grins as he ends his line, playing a final note before the chorus, and Matteo grins back at him. This may be the world's song now, but they don't need a song about survival anymore. Or about loneliness. They can live a hundred songs together, and thousands of drawings scribbled in black and white until they turn to color, each one happier than the next, and Matteo can't wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine a trans man writing something like Take Me To Church and then a lesbian singing it. The Power they have, and The Power Druck had in using it in the first place. They are not Hozier, however, and I did not shove in half the Hozier songs I wanted so I renamed chapters after the songs that most inspired them. You don’t have to listen. But this whole thing was started after his concert I went to (1st chapter, who?) so his music has always been a part of it.
> 
> It’s been more than a week since my last chapter and I can’t believe Druck managed to come back before I did. I'm shook. I missed them so much. All I have to say for my own update is that mental health is a bitch. I didn’t know how many people read author’s notes until I got well wishes on my last two chapters, so I wanted to say, I’m doing okay and thanks to anyone who said they hoped things got better or to those who said my chapters helped a bad day of their own.
> 
> You'll notice I didn’t add a 13th chapter. In between feeling down and being busy, I didn't write it in time, but I will be spending time in an airport soon, and I can’t sleep on planes, so I may write my epilogue then and post it as a surprise?  
> Just in case I don’t, this is the final chapter! It should wrap up almost everything, and I wanted to thank you all so much for reading. I loved all the comments, no matter how big or small, or whether you left one on every chapter you could or just one or two. I tried replying to as many as my mood allowed, and y'all made me laugh more times than I can count. And honestly? Druck is the most supportive, tight-knit fandom that I’ve met. There are so many super well written fics on here that I’m always surprised when I see how many people read mine. This is literally the longest, most self indulgent thing I’ve written in a long while, so thanks for supporting it, whether if it was just through bookmarking, clicking kudos, or even just finishing the damn thing. Y’all are the best. I'm going to miss this story so much <3  
> I’ll probably write other druck fics one day, but not until I’m back from vacation, so feel free to hit up my tumblr (@allhail-queen-nerd) until then? It’s just my main, so don’t skam it or anything (puns lol), but I’d love to get to know people outside of the comments section.
> 
> And lastly, Happy Pride Month! Be proud of who you are and how you identify, and whoever you are, I’m proud of you too. Go forth and live your best lives!


	13. wasteland, baby!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> help, I can't focus on writing anything new so here's an epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to start by apologizing, because it's been almost two months since I finished this fic, and it's so not relevant anymore it's not even funny. Like, I didn't even know Mohammad and Essam and Omar's names when I finished this? They are still Yousef and Elias. I'm thinking of heading back and changing them, but now that I know them, dynamics are different? At least for Elias vs. Essam and Omar, Yousef/Mohammad is still smitten af.
> 
> I'm posting because I've been home from vacation for over a week and even though I have soooo many ideas for both Davenzi and Mazzouk fics, I can't focus?? No words are coming. I think I just needed to start writing again, and so it was easy to return to a fic and write the epilogue that I had already come up with. It's mostly just a chapter of David and Matteo flirting like smitten assholes and being in love. I don't even know if I write in character anymore but now you have an epilogue, two months late. My bad. Especially because I wrapped it up so nicely in my last chapter?? Sorry if I got y'all shook if you didn't expect this fic to ever show up again. 
> 
> Also! I caved and created a druck tumblr this summer because I'm obsessed with Amira's season. Go follow it @amirathelegend!

“I can’t do this.”

“Of course you can, we’ve talked about this. I’m going to be right there when it’s over.”

“Yeah, but it’s scary,” Matteo whines.

“Matteo,” David says. It’s just his name but it sounds pointed. Like,  _ Matteo _ . Matteo doesn’t like that _Matteo_. It makes him feel like he’s disappointed someone, even if David promises that he hasn’t.

He sighs and continues staring across the street at a nondescript office building. No one would even know it was a therapist office. It eases his anxiety at least a little until he remembers that it’s still a strange place on the other side of town where he’ll be talking about his problems with someone he barely knows. Sometimes, Matteo can barely even admit to himself that burying himself in his room and his dramatic lows aren’t normal. They aren’t healthy.

“I love you,” David says softer through the phone.

Matteo wishes he was here. But David is busy with his record label this morning, and Jonas has his new internship at the governor's office, and everyone else he knows is busy as well. Matteo is on his own.

“I love you too,” Matteo repeats quietly.

“You’ll be okay,” David reminds him. “You’re very brave for doing this.”

Matteo scoffs. He doesn’t feel brave.

“You are,” David repeats. “Do you know how long it took for me to go to a therapist? Years.”

“But I have you now,” Matteo says, but he knows it’s a weak excuse. David has been the best help in the world, comforting him when he crashes after a message from his dad or when he’s overwhelmed with the helplessness of finding a job or some of his overall failures. But David isn’t a coping mechanism. Matteo doesn’t want David to have to be.

“ _Matteo_ ,” David says in the same way again.

“ _David_ ,” Matteo mocks, in the same tone.

David laughs. “I’m almost done with this meeting. I’ll pick you up when you’re done? And then we can go get dinner and join your friends tonight.”

It sounds wonderful. Matteo almost hadn’t been able to imagine a life like this - so casual and filled with love and friends. He probably could have used therapy much sooner.

“Okay,” Matteo sighs.

“I’m going to hang up now,” David says. “And you’re going to go into that office and meet your therapist. It’s the first day. They just want to get to know you.”

“I love you,” Matteo says again.

Matteo can hear David’s smile in his voice. “You’re procrastinating.”

He is. It doesn’t mean David has to call him out on it. Or maybe he does, because Matteo still isn’t crossing the street. They stand in silence, each on the other end of the line, listening to each other breathe. Somehow this is more calming than anything David could have said, knowing that he’ll still be there when Matteo doesn’t know what to do.

“Okay,” Matteo finally says. “I’m going.”

“I love you,” David says. “Good luck.”

Matteo squawks. There shouldn’t be anything he needs luck for. Is this something he needs luck for? He has the worst luck in the world. But then David laughs and Matteo thinks his luck isn’t so bad after all.

“See you on the other side,” David says, and then hangs up.

Matteo stares at his phone. Now Matteo has no one to talk to in order to waste more time before getting up the nerve to go inside. He huffs and shoves his phone deep into his large hoodie pockets and looks across the street again. His therapist is waiting for him there. He wonders how long they’d wait before deciding that he had ditched. Or what would happen if he actually ditched. 

He takes a deep breath and crosses the street anyway.

****

Matteo feels raw when he leaves his therapist’s office. David had been right, it had just been getting to know each other. His therapist was a man who couldn’t have been more than five years older than Matteo, with an old sweater and a ratty old couch that he said many tears had been shed on. That in itself had been a weird thing to say, but his therapist was weird. Like, a weird interesting, where the first thing he’d done when Matteo started talking about his old problem with weed was talk about how he used to be a drug dealer who got in bad spots himself. It was off-putting. But somehow? The type of person Matteo felt he could talk to.

Matteo doesn’t know how David had found the therapist’s number, or what contacts he had gone through, or how many clients the man even had, but talking to him was the relief of opening a bottle before any pressure could crack. And his therapist had good advice somehow. Even for the first day.

Matteo doesn’t ever discuss things about himself a lot. It’s exhausting work, opening himself up to be helped by someone new and talking about things he doesn’t usually, but it helps. Before leaving, his therapist had given him a pamphlet on coping mechanisms to try the next time he starts spiraling, and Matteo thinks they might work.

David is outside with a hug.

Matteo falls into it, collapsing his arms around his boyfriend’s waist. 

“How was it?” David asks into his ear. Matteo takes in the feeling of their faces brushing, his cheek on David’s shoulder, surrounded by his arms, and says, “Good.”

He doesn't want to talk about it. He just spent an hour talking. Luckily, David understands, just like he always seems to.

David drives them to a nearby restaurant with the greasiest burgers they can find to celebrate. The hostess asks for David’s autograph, and then smiles at Matteo like they can both share the awe of being in such a cool person’s presence. Matteo gets it. David grins, friendly as ever, signs a small notebook page for her, and then follows a waiter to a table near the back of the restaurant. If anyone else notices that he is here, they don’t bother them.

“Do you ever feel like all of this is fake?” Matteo asks, once their drinks arrive, because he’s still recovering from therapy mode and it’s been months but he still feels like he’s floating when he’s around David. It’s probably something he should mention in his next session.

“I’m dating the most amazing boy in the world,” David says carelessly, like it’s nothing, and wraps his ankles around Matteo’s under the table with a smug grin because he knows Matteo can’t take compliments without turning as red as a tomato. Matteo turns as red as a tomato. But then his smile softens and he grabs Matteo’s hand, “Of course I do.”

“I think you’re the most amazing boy in the world,” Matteo mumbles, as weak repute. They can’t both be the most amazing boy in the world. 

“No, I’m serious,” David says. “I didn’t think I’d ever find someone like you. Someone who accepts me for who I am, and deals with everything around me, and is super cute-”  Matteo kicks him, but their legs are so tangled that he ends up kicking both of them and gets trapped when David leans forward across the table continuing honestly, “-You inspire me to be myself.”

Matteo doesn’t really know what to do with that. He takes David’s hand on table and plays with his fingers before he can gather enough of a shit-eating grin to say, “Oh, so I’m your inspiration?”

“Oh, definitely,” David says solemnly. “Only reason I keep you around.”

“You just said I’m the most amazing boy in the world,” Matteo pouts.

“Yeah, I did,” David agrees, looping their fingers together.

“You’re the fucking cheesiest,” Matteo snorts, despite his blush.

“You said you felt like this was fake,” David counters.

“David,” Matteo says, quite seriously. If David is going to embarrass him with compliments like this, he is going to do the same. “You’re the man of my dreams.”

“I’m the man of many people’s dreams,” David laughs. Which is true. It’s frustrating to find something to make David blush when people tweet some of the dirtiest things at him daily. He and Matteo had gone through some of the tweets that had tagged David one day, laughing until Matteo had found a way to distract him and do exactly what the people tweeting couldn’t.

“Fine,” Matteo pouts. “See if I try to be cheesy again.”

“ _ Nooooo _ ,” David whines, squeezing his hand tighter. “I like it when you’re cheesy.”

“You can go to your twitter followers for that,” Matteo counters, but he doesn’t really mean it because he’s grown past being jealous and is also grinning despite himself.

“My twitter followers,” David whispers, leaning forward more, “Can’t do this.”

David kisses Matteo across the table, and Matteo realizes his floaty feeling isn’t just because he feels like all of this is unreal. It's the feeling of being hopelessly, helplessly in love. Maybe it doesn’t have to be brought up with his therapist after all.

But then David orders fries and a milkshake, and Matteo knows what’s about to happen. 

“Don’t,” he warns.

“Don’t what?” David says innocently.

Matteo shoots him a glance that says he knows that David _knows_ exactly what he’s talking about. David smiles innocently. Matteo’s burger arrives. David gets his fries and a milkshake. Matteo shots him another warning glance, but David goes to stick his fry in his milkshake anyway. And then he eats it.

“Blasphemy,” Matteo groans.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David says, eating another fry covered in milkshake.

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“Are you?” David asks, tilting his head with that smug little smile, and then goes to dip another fry in his milkshake.

Matteo’s arm shoots across the table to grab his basket of fries to stop the madness. David laughs and tries taking it back. “Hey!”

“No! They’re my fries now!”

“Matteo!” David is laughing, and they are getting fries all over the table. “It’s just a milkshake!”

“My Italian tastebuds can’t watch this!”

“If you would just try it-”

“No!”

“Excuse me?” Someone asks at the head of the table. When both Matteo and David look up, Matteo has a hand on David’s face trying to stop him from eating and another trying to grab the fries, while David has both hands on his food trying to protect it against his chest. They are both giggling. In front of them is a boy and a girl, the girl with her hands in her pockets, and the boy with a magazine with David’s face on it.

David clears his throat and takes back his basket of fries to place it on the table. Matteo leans back into his side of the booth and eats his burger like it’s the most interesting thing in the world and hopes they hadn’t taken pictures.

“Sorry,” the boy automatically apologizes, looking between them. “I just saw you here, and I didn’t think I’d get another chance to say how much your music has meant to me, so um… I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Matteo thinks he probably could have chosen another moment to come over if that was the case, but gives them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they were leaving the restaurant and it was their last chance or something when he looks up and sees David smiling kindly. Matteo would want to scream. Even now, he grumbles and slumps in his seat. 

“That’s okay,” David is assuring the boy. He doesn’t look like he wants to scream about the interruption so Matteo lets it be.

“Is this your boyfriend?” the girl asks.

“Yeah,” David says, and then shifts his smile over to Matteo, “He is.”

He doesn’t say Matteo’s name or introduce him further than that. It’s not like people couldn’t find out more if they looked, but Matteo's media presence correlated with David is purposefully minimal. David doesn’t discuss him by name in interviews, and they shift attention off his dating life towards actual music whenever possible, but it’s not like it’s a secret. They’re just private.

“I like your new album a lot,” the girl finally says. “It’s happier.”

“Thank you,” David says, still smiling. “I’m happier.”

The girl glances at Matteo again because having listened to Vampire City’s new album, they both know part of the reason that David is happier. There are more love songs for one thing. For another, David has literally tweeted why. Somewhere on the internet is a tweet from THE David Schreibner that vaguely reads "my boyfriend makes me the happiest person in the world". Little do they know that David had tweeted it after Matteo had jokingly gifted him a toilet brush. But no one needs to know that.

“Umm,” the boy says again, and then awkwardly holds out the magazine before realizing that could be rude, and then takes it back, and then offers it forward just slightly with a, “Do you think you could sign your article in here for me?”

David’s eyes shift down to the magazine. Matteo looks at it too, because there’s nothing else to do other than eat his burger when he isn’t actively involved in this conversation. It’s the magazine that had come out around a month ago when Vampire City’s album had officially been released after all their singles and promotional videos. 

Matteo remembers reading it. It had discussed why David had decided to start singing (new confidence), what he planned on doing in the future (film school), and most importantly, it had been the first, and so far only, interview where David had actually discussed how growing up trans had affected him and what it brought to his music now. It was the most personal thing David had ever released, outside of his music.

The night it had been published, Matteo and David had stayed home all day with Matteo holding David’s hand and distracting him from reading the comment section with attempts to win the final level of Zelda and making the worst sandwiches in the world.

Now, David glances at Matteo, before taking the magazine and a pen from the table and flipping to the article to sign the picture of himself right next to the heading:  _ Normalizing Trans Artists with Vampire City’s David Schreibner _ . It’s a loopy thing that Matteo knows that David has practiced over and over, and that he’s seen him do a million times over by now, but he signs it slower on this one.

“I think you’re really brave,” the boy blurts out.

David blinks up at him in surprise. Matteo holds his breath. He hasn't ever been present for a conversation with David like this before. The girl takes the boy’s hand. Matteo wants to take a bite of his burger but no one else is moving and he doesn’t want to be the one to disturb anything. Then David smiles, more genuine than before, and gives the boy an _almost_ embarrassed, “Thank you.”

"No, really," the boy says, like David hadn't believed him. He's nervously fidgeting his hands. "It means a lot."

David studies him for the briefest second before writing something else in the magazine, folding it closed, and then handing it back. "You're welcome."

The boy smiles, then looks between David and Matteo again. “Thank you! I’m really sorry for disturbing, really, I just- really wanted to meet you.”

“That’s okay,” David repeats.

“Nice to meet you,” the girl says, grabbing the boys arm to pull him away before he can ramble some more. She smiles at both of them. “You and your boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you too,” David smiles back, and then directs a pointed smile at the boy who looks like he’s going to pass out.

“Bye,” Matteo adds, like a little shit with no patience.

“Bye,” the boy parrots, awkwardly raising a hand before he is dragged away. “Thank you.”

Within seconds, David and Matteo are left on their own again, watching the two leave the restaurant. Matteo turns towards David first to see him staring contemplatively out the window. Matteo thinks of the boy telling David that he is brave. Matteo has been around long enough to realize that not many people do that. They just compliment his music or ask about Laura or fan over how amazing he is. Part of it could have been that David had not opened himself up enough to be seen as brave until recently. First with the singing, then with the article, soon with his dream of film school. Facing their fears and anxieties seemed to be doing both of them good.

“You’re literally their hero,” he teases.

This time, David really does blush. “Just wait until they find out Laura and I aren’t doing another album.”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like you just for the music,” Matteo continues smugly. “They’re going to watch all the weird gay hippie movies that you make just like they’re going to continue listening to Laura’s solo weird gay hippie music.”

“I have to go to school before I start making movies,” David mutters, but Matteo is taking advantage of a finally embarrassed David.

“Yeah, but they’re going to be amazing.”

“We’ll see,” David says.

“You’re amazing, so your films are going to be amazing, and that’s how it works,” Matteo informs him solemnly.

David just laughs. “That’s not how that works.”

“That’s exactly how it works!”

“Hmm,” David grins. “Is it really?”

“Ja,” Matteo grins back at him. He nods, attempting for straight face that doesn’t give away how he’d literally die for David’s smile. “It really is.”

“Okay,” David snorts, before gesturing at Matteo’s food. “Finish your burger. We’re meeting with Jonas soon.”

“ _ Finish your burger, _ ” Matteo mocks. “Finish your fries, Mr. Schreibner.”

David moves to grab a fry and then dips it purposely towards his milkshake. 

“Separately!”

“Seriously, just try - Matteo, that’s mine!”

****

Hanna is the one to open the door to Jonas’ house when they arrive, giving both Matteo and David a warm welcoming hug before inviting them downstairs and kissing Jonas’ cheek. Abdi and Carlos are already there, talking about his new flat with Kiki, while Kiki and a couple of the girls chat near a counter of stacked boxes of pizza. It's a small get together, keeping up after graduating, and it feels like stepping home.

“Yes!” Jonas calls when he sees David and Matteo at the door. “Everyone is here!”

“Aye!” Matteo agrees, abandoning David to meet Jonas halfway in a tackle hug.

“How’d it go today?” Jonas asks when they’re closer, just their own private conversation, and Matteo smiles. 

“My therapist is a weed dealer.”

“No way,” Jonas gasps.

“Yeah, he’s going to hook me up with some next week and-” Matteo stops with a laugh when Jonas punches his shoulder looking appalled and incredulous. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”

“Dude,” Jonas says. “What the fuck.”

“Dude,” Matteo says. “You think I’d buy weed from my therapist?”

“Dude,” Jonas counters. “Your therapist actually sells weed?”

Matteo shrugs. “He used to.”

“Dude,” Abdi says, joining in the conversation as he throws his arms around both of them. “Are you serious? Your therapist  _ actually  _ used to sell weed?”

“Yeah,” Matteo grins. “He’s going to sell me some next week.”

“Duuuuuuuude-” Abdi starts, looking just as concerned as Jonas had been, which only succeeds in making Matteo laugh harder.

“He’s joking,” Jonas informs Abdi, glaring at Matteo with another hit to his shoulder.

“Maybe,” Matteo says.

“He’s  _ joking _ ,” Jonas repeats.

“Okay, good,” Abdi grins, then pauses before asking, “Do you think he’d sell me some?”

“Dude!” Jonas exclaims.

“I’m not going to ask my therapist to sell you weed!” Matteo laughs.

“Who’s selling weed?” Carlos asks, joining them.

“Matteo’s therapist,” Abdi informs him.

“Oh, okay,” Carlos says, and then frowns, “Should we be concerned about this?”

“I’m fine!” Matteo assures them. “I really am. Things are- things are just... perfect, you know?”

Abdi sighs wistfully, “I want to be in love.”

“Me too,” David says, popping into the conversation by weaseling his way to Matteo’s side. It’s hard to believe anything he says about not being in love when he presses a soft kiss to the side of Matteo’s head as he smiles.

“You’re an ass,” Matteo mutters.

“Yeah, but you love me,” David says smugly.

“Yeah, I do,” Matteo agrees, because even joking he couldn’t pretend otherwise.

Abdi groans when they kiss, and looks over toward where the girls are congregating. “How come Matteo can land a famous musician but Sam wouldn’t even accept my lollipop?”

“I’m just cooler than you,” Matteo pulls away from David to reply.

“Hey!” Carlos says for Abdi, because Abdi is acting too sad to do it himself.

“Boys,” Jonas says, interrupting their bickering like he can always be depended on to do. “We have all summer to worry about this! We passed our abi’s, David finished school online, and I guarantee we can find you a girl before summer is over.”

“Really?” Abdi pouts.

“Of course, bro,” Carlos agrees. “You’re a catch.”

“You can take a date to one of my concerts this month before I start touring,” David offers.

“Really?” Abdi beams.

“Yeah,” David shrugs. “What are friends for if not giving away free tickets to their concerts?”

Matteo leans back into David as he wraps his arms around Matteo’s shoulders and hums. “Last time I took a girl to one of his concerts, we broke up.”

Abdi actually looks concerned about this for a minute. “Really? Do you think it’s a bad idea because-”

“Abdi,” Jonas says pointedly, and then raises an eyebrow towards where Matteo is literally cuddled against David as a reminder that it was not the fact that he had taken a girl to a concert that broke them up.

“Oh shit,” Abdi says, remembering, and then reaches the wrong point by asking, “You think she’ll fall in love with David instead of me?”

They all groan. Matteo can hear David giggling in his ear which causes Matteo to giggle as well. Jonas looks horrified that Abdi would even come to that conclusion. “Nah, man. Those concerts are good luck or something.”

“Last I heard Sara was dating Leonie, and they went to one of his concerts too,” Carlos says, before pondering, “I should take Kiki.”

“What’s the luck for, getting married?” Matteo asks, and Carlos turns bright red, sputtering.

“Someone is getting married?” Kiki says excitedly, bouncing into the conversation like anything remotely concerning commitment had summoned her.

“No!” Carlos continues sputtering.

“Shame,” Kiki says innocently. “I’d really like to go to a wedding this summer. Or plan one.”

No one says a word to save Carlos as he is dragged away to calm down his girlfriend from any extreme steps or expectations in their relationship. If Kiki has her way, they really will be attending a wedding. Instead, they all laugh, and then Jonas excuses himself to hang out with Hanna, and Abdi wanders off to act sad and tragic, and then it’s just David and Matteo.

“When do you leave for your concert tour?” Matteo finally asks.

“A month,” David whispers. “I get back in just in time for the school year at the arts university.”

Matteo stays quiet. He'll be gone a long time. Matteo had known there were things that he’d have to deal with when his boyfriend was a superstar, but somehow he thinks that this is the thing that he’ll have the most trouble with. He loves all the time he spends with David. More than a month away from each other? Matteo, and he means this as dramatically as possible, could literally die.

David moves to stand in front of him and holds both his hands. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that actually… Do you think, maybe, you’d want to come?”

“What?” Matteo asks in surprise.

“I know you have your friends here, and you’re working on your relationship with your mom, and you’ve got therapy sessions now, and it’s probably very soon in our relationship, but,” David starts to ramble. “But I’d really like to have you with me.”

Matteo almost laughs. Too soon in their relationship? Matteo had said that he loved him after a week. Now it’s been months. He can picture nights on a tour bus cramped into a bed with David, and sneaking into abandoned buildings like Laura had said they’d done, and waiting backstage listening to David sing his new songs before hanging out at the bar with him. Late night cuddles, and listening to Sam Smith, and everything in between. With them, nothing feels too soon.

“To Detroit?” Matteo asks, mostly as a joke.

“Yeah,” David laughs. “We’ve got a show there.”

“You what?” Matteo repeats again, a little dumbly.

“America likes our music too,” David says. His fingers fiddle in Matteo’s hands, and his smile is weak like he’s somehow afraid Matteo will say no. “Who knew?”

Of course they do. Who wouldn’t?

“More fans like today’s?” Matteo asks.

“No many like those,” David says. “But lots of fans. Some aren’t as nice. Last year someone tried to break into Laura’s dressing room.”

“And Laura is okay with me coming?”

David huffs and looks towards his feet, “She, um- she actually called me an idiot for  _ not _ inviting you yet.”

Matteo can’t help but smile. He likes Laura. He really does. He’s glad she doesn’t hate him because otherwise all the time he spent at their place would be uncomfortable.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” David repeats, with a grin.

Matteo shrugs like it’s a completely casual decision. “I mean, I might as well come. Have nothing better to do with my life.”

David laughs, “Asshole.”

“You love me,” Matteo says, mimicking David from earlier.

“Yeah, I do,” David smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> lmao what are exams? Certainly not this. I didn't mean to start another fic, and certainly not a multichapter one, but here we are. I don't know what this is or where it's going either.
> 
> In this, pretend that Vampire City is the duo version of Hozier. We all know David listens to him. The title is from Take Me to Church : "the only heaven I'll be sent to / is when I'm alone with you" which is basically the fic. 
> 
> Get ready for LOTS of pining probably, and thanks for reading <3


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